On The Line of Battle
by United Systems Navy
Summary: My first Fanfic, about the fifteenth Kragar regiment fighting a trench war against Tzeentch heretics, which, naturally doesn't go just as planned.  Some reviews would be much appreciated.
1. 1: Advance the line

The Line of Battle

_Talleris, western hemisphere: 1500 hours._

Kragarian fifteenth regiment, fifth platoon Sergeant Koll Gramman Drew the deck of cards out of hit kit bag and placed them at the center of the circle his squad was sitting in, in the damp earthen bunker with an exaggerated flourish. In response his men clapped their hands in mock applause. Quickly he dealt out two cards to each of the five men, then himself. "Wagers?" Private Gardener drew out a broken Ork stabba taken from his first deployment on Kargan a year ago; Corporal Shoaggoth revealed a hundred-credit stick from when they had scammed the Valgar 42nd out of their combined earnings en route to the invasion a month ago. Private Curze dropped in his copy of The Imperial Guardsman's Uplifting Primer; the last one between the men. Private Krane added a double barreled, break action bolter pistol, and Private Gerring dropped in a laspistol, finally Koll added a long, serrated knife of inhuman design. "Lets begin." He turned to Gardner seated on his right. "What you got?" The brown haired and tall, yet barely fully grown soldier held up an Emperor and a five; fifteen.

His grayish blue eyes squinted for a moment in thought as he weighed his odds. "Hit me" Koll drew a card and handed it to him face down. A Primarch; ten points for a twenty-five: four too high.

"Ooh" several people winced as Gardener sighed, dropping his cards and passing over his wager. Koll turned to the next man down; Shoaggoth. "Hit me" the burly, always helmeted man said, holding up a four and a six. His next card was a ten.

"Go or stay?" Koll asked unnecessarily.

"Stay."

Average sized Curze sitting directly across from Koll was up next. He held with a Primarch and a seven, "Go?" He considered it for a moment.

"Stay." The squad collectively groaned.

"Come on Curze, thought you were better then that" Gerring chided him.

"Fine, go" Curze muttered. Koll passed him a card, Curze flipped it to reveal a three.

"Fortune favors the bold," he said, before turning to Gerring. Outside, he heard a rumble of thunder from the dark clouds that had been gathering for the better part of the week. As if that thunder was a heralding trumpet, the clouds immediately burst open and unleashed a torrent of fat raindrops. Within seconds the bottom of the trench their bunker branched off of was flooded and Koll could hear shouts and curses at Mother Nature from the men trapped outside on guard duty.

"Pray the emperor spares us from attack today, this is the worst kind of weather to die in" Gardner muttered. Gerring had a five and a four, and received a six for his troubles. He went again and got a seven. Koll chuckled as he relieved him of his prized sidearm.

"What's the matter, afraid to get a little wet?" He turned to Krane, seated on his left and holding a pair of sevens. "The wetter the better."

"Because you grew up in a swamp" Krane muttered under his breath, then; "hit me." Koll gave him a card. All eyes were on the huge man as he flipped it. A sly grin spread across his face.

"What is it?" Curze demanded. Koll, who had been with him the longest, recognized the smile instantly. Limply he picked up the knife, and dropped it at is feet.

"Oh Frack" Gerring lamented as Krane turned his card so the squad could see. Impossibly he had managed to receive a third seven.

"Your wagers please" he grunted, holding out a gloved hand.

"I call foul play!" Gerring bellowed. Gardener nodded. "No one gets three sevens in a row without a card up their sleeve."

"Want to fight me over it little man?" Krane asked, standing as high as he cold in the six-foot ceiling, his upper body hunched over as he grinned menacingly as the tiny Gerring. Koll sighed, then reached over and flipped up both of the man's cuffs before he could react.

"Aha!" he shouted in triumph, withdrawing a four. "Krane, return the wagers." The man hesitated, frowning at the expressions ranging from amusement from Shoeggoth to Gerring's harsh glare. "That's an official order, do you need me to find the Commissar?" Koll asked. The threat was empty, but still Krane limply dropped his prizes into the circle and dropped heavily to the ground.

"Sorry Sarge" he mumbled.

"Accepted, now can we keep playing, or should we go back to twiddling our thumbs?" he held up the deck and looked at the mud stained faces around him. They had landed on Talleris three weeks ago and advanced rapidly across the agrarian world's western hemisphere. Just three days ago had been ordered to dig in and hold until the liberation force was reinforced from orbit and boredom was beginning to have an impact on tempers. The twenty new regiments promised had never showed, and so they were stuck in this spot until the Imperial Navy could muster a large enough convoy for three-hundred thousand men and send it over from the sector depot in the Aggras system. Two weeks including on and off artillery barrages across the five-hundred yard no man's land from the cannon they had lugged into place, and still not a peep out of the hordes of Tzeentch and Khornate heretics and possible daemons they faced.

"You okay Sarge?" Koll awoke from his thoughts at Gardner's words. He realized he'd been staring slack-jawed through him.

"Yeah, just wondering what they're doing on the other side." His answer set the men on edge.

"Probably some ritual to give us a couple of charnel daemons, maybe even a daemon prince if they're feeling particularly generous" Gerron supplied.

"Nice guys they are."

"Or they too are spread thin" Gardner said optimistically.

Koll shook his head. "There were two-hundred million people on this world before the Tzeentch scum converted them to chaos. Between the bombardment, our offensive, and them culling the ones who resisted that leaves maybe a hundred and fifty million, I doubt they're spread thin." They had brought just over half a million with them on the initial assault.

"Well they haven't been active for two weeks so chances are they're not going to be coming anytime soon" Curze hopefully suggested.

"Don't say that you fracking idiot, now they'll send a Daemon prince for sure, maybe even a couple squads of Beserkers for good measure" Gerring hissed. Shoeggoth reached over and put an arm on his shoulder.

"Enough with this discussion, bad for morale" Koll finally said, kicking himself for not doing it a minute earlier. The fact was that no matter how hard he tried to avoid it, every conversation always ended up turning to their enemy. With the card game derailed, he only had one distraction left. "Now, I happen to have received _this_" he reached into his kit bag and pulled out a medium sized liquor bottle, "from one of the Ratlings for the rest of those credits we got on the flight over, now who wants a sip?" He was rewarded by every man's expression lightening several notches towards joy and a dry clap from Krane. He knocked the spout against the stock of his lasgun, leaning in the doorway behind him, relishing the loud crack as the cork was blow off in a fountain of froth. At that moment there was a second, distant crack, the one more closely associated with a far-away Earthshaker being discharged. "Oh, the gunners are starting up again_._" Then his eyes widened as he realized that the sound had come from the _opposite_ direction of the rearwards artillery positions. A low whistle began, growing louder by the second. Rapidly the squad caught on. Curze looked out the doorway.

"Frak" he whispered. At that moment they were knocked to the ground as the left wall of the bunker imploded, partially collapsing it in a cascade of earth and wood. Up and down the heretic's lines hundreds of guns roared in unison.

Koll exploded outwards from the rubble with a loud cry and found himself looking at hazy daylight through a foot-wide hole in the ceiling. "Get up!" he bellowed unnecessarily as one after another his squad broke free. "Grab your weapons, we're under attack!" He grabbed his lasgun and leapt out the now significantly wider door, splashing through several inches of brown and red water. The barrage landed throughout the trenches, kicking tons of earth and body parts high into the air and smashing equipment and dug in tanks. Men splashed through the trenches in all directions, running frantically for their positions. Gardner pulled himself to his feet and dug his lasgun out of the rubble, quickly wiping away the mud over the sights with slightly less muddy hands. He glanced across to the source of the blast and saw that the shelling had split open the bunker next to theirs like an overripe melon, pulverizing the seven men of Terzan's squad inside it.

"Lets go!" Gerring yelled, grabbing him by the shoulder as the squad sprinted outside. The heretic's shells boomed and the ground shook as they impacted. Koll watched them emerge.

"Man your stations, prepare for attack!" Lieutenant Krin was ordering over their vox beads. "Sergeants report in." The five remaining officers sounded off

Koll waited for his turn to report, then; "Koll, third squad is intact, awaiting orders." None came as the next salvo landed and a sharp roar echoed over the line. Looking down, Koll saw the impact of a nearby blast knock the Lieutenant off the bunker roof he'd climbed onto. Fortunately, unless he somehow landed on a shard of wood pointed towards him, he'd live with minor injuries, unlike the five men who had been vaporized. Another shell split open the trench the yards in the opposite direction with bloody results for two squads from Jol's sixth platton on their immediate left. Koll glanced around at his own squad to see them at the trench lip, guns aimed through the barbed wire fences at the open ground, faces set in determination as they tried to ignore the slaughter going on around them and the rain coming down in blankets of water that rose around their shins. Finally, their own guns opened up in reply.

"Spotter Valkyrie's reporting enemy foot soldiers approaching in mass assault" Krin finally said, "lets show them the wrath of the emperor!" Koll roared in agreement along with every man and women in the platoon. He peered into the clearing, nothing. Another volley landed, this time in the support trenches further back. A wing of Valkyries sporting bolters and missile pods bolted onto their hulls raced overhead. In the hundred-yard visibility, Koll saw a mass of shapes moving towards him.

"Enemy spotted, one hundred yards!" he bellowed. The cry was taken up along the trenches.

"Hold your fire till my word" Krim instructed. Koll saw him climbing up to his position out of the corner of his eye. _A good day to fight_ he was thinking to himself as the rain washed over him. The shapes steadily grew larger, seventy-five yards, sixty, "Fire!" As Koll pulled the trigger, the ground in front of him abruptly detonated, blowing a blinding plume of dirt into the sky with a shock wave that sent the entire squad reeling. All along the front line, the tarea in front of the trenches rippled and barbed wire disintegrated. It had been timed perfectly, there was no other explanation for the accuracy of the shells as they blew away the defenses and blinded a good three-quarters of the line Further back the heavy bolters and autocannons opened up.

"Up, fire at will!" Koll yelled, leaping out of the mud completely soaked and pulling the trigger, sending a line of red bolts through the falling earth. His squad joined in, pumping las-bolts downfield while Gerring's light autocannon from his PDF days roared as it spat forty caliber slugs and Krane set up his heavy stubber on a bipod as it spewed solid death at the approaching enemy. As the debris finally cleared, Koll's heart instinctively jumped as he saw the heretics charging forward through the wild return fire in a human wave at forty yards. Quick aim adjustments all around fixed that, and they were cut down faster than they could run, pushing the charge back. Koll swept his lasgun up and down a ten-yard length of troops, slicing up the first few ranks. The heavy stubber gouged a twenty-man deep and ten man wide constant hole in the line, one that only widened as it roared. Inaccurate volleys of lasers and stub rounds shot over their heads, taking out a few unfortunates but missing the majority of the front lines.

"Think they conjured the storm?" Curze asked worriedly as he dropped an empty charge sell and slotted another from his ammo webbing into his belt.

"No, this is not one of theirs" Shoeggoth said in a low, barely audible mutter next to him. Somehow Curze believed him. The Heretics, clad in makeshift body armor and corrupted Imperial guard fatigues from the planet's two regiments painted red and blue and adorned with ruinous symbols were being cut to pieces and physically pushed back one yard at a time. Overhead, the Valkyries came roaring back, strafing the wave as they went. A couple of unused missiles blew out great chunks of mud and gore.

"KEEP IT UP, SHOW THEM THE PRICE OF HERESY!" a new voice roared through the air, somehow out shouting the impact of the chaos artillery's latest volley on the lines. Koll couldn't help but smile as he recognized Commissar Fury's unsilenceable battle voice. That smile vanished when he saw the first tank. Its main gun fired, disintegrating Sergeant Kolm and half his squad while its twin-linked bolters walked their fire up and down the trenches. A Leman Russ demolisher dug in ten yards behind the front line fired once, scoring a direct hit that took the tank's turret off. Almost immediately a second one came up, followed by half a dozen more fanning out through the lines. Heir shells joined the next artillery salvo. A second wave of Valkyries swooped in now. The gunships soared in long arcs along the length of the heretical charge, hurling bolter shells and missiles into the packed masses of shrieking bodies. Multiple tanks detonated, adding to the carnage.

Koll head the thunder as their artillery fired again, this time sending long streaks of glowing inferno rounds over the trenches. The entire attack vanished in a series of mushrooming fireballs. Napalm rained down across the battlefield, vaporizing the rapidly rising water into a thick fog that reduced visibility to almost zero. A chorus of pained screams rose above the steady buzz of the lasguns.

"Fix bayonets!" Regimental commander Wolfe barked over all channels. Koll grabbed the nine inch steel blade out of its sheaf and snapped it onto the barrel of his weapon. Around him two thousand men did likewise. Krane simply shortened the barrel of his weapon by a few inches and made ready a curved shortsword he'd taped and wired a shock maul emitter to with the help of the techpriest Heron. Behind them makeshift bridges came down across the trenches and the fourteenth Carrigan armored regiment made ready to go. A final volley of inferno shells, only audible, crackled overhead, this time judging by the sound landing amid the enemy trenches. "Charge!"

A battle cry of "for the emperor!" went up along the line. Roaring, Koll grabbed a broken shingle and used it to vault over the lip of the trench, landing halfway up his boots in a foot of mud. His squad came down around him

"Forward!" he bellowed, leading them on across the gap. He stomped over the piles of smoldering corpses. A still faintly twitching body in half-molten Arbite's carpace armor he dispatched with a boot through its skull. For a few moments there was no las fire from the opposite side, no artillery shells, nothing but shouts and the collective splash of thousands of pairs of boots. The shell-torn trenches appeared out of the fog, decked in banners displaying the mind-scorching symbols of chaos. The gun emplacements were deserted save for hundreds of corpses, many charred beyond recognition of having once been human beings.

"They've broken!" Fury called. At that moment, shutters and camouflage cloaks swung back to reveal the muzzles of a hundred cannon. Before Koll could mutter an "Oh Frack," they fired. The line was atomized, ejected skyward in a cloud of earth and bits of human, tossing him twenty feet into a long water filled dish with a grunt of pain. Krane managed to grab Gardner and Curze, tackling them into the water as the men around them were explosively slain. He pulled his head up just in time to see hundreds of screaming cultists, their features twisted by cybernetics and the mutations of chaos rise from the trenches and open fire on their comrades as they stumbled into the concussion wave.

"Get to cover we're dead out here" he growled as they leapt to their feet amid a hail of red beams. He hauled out the stubber as they sprinted the last twenty feet and leaped into the trenches. "Head for the guns!" he bellowed, riddling two cultists aiming at them from over the trench lip. Gardner rounded a corner, catching three cultists with a wild pull of the trigger, the other two coming up behind him. Something roared a few feet from his head on the other side of the trench. "Mortar pit, grenades!"

"Got one, cover me" Gardner announced, ducking in by the wall of the trench. Several cultists manning a heavy bolter and a platoon of infantry spotted him and let out a shout of glee as they raced forward, raising their weapons. Gardner almost nonchalantly drew out a grenade and pulled the pin as Krane mowed down the first dozen and drove the rest to cover. The two heretics on the bolter, whose hands appeared to have been fused to the weapon swung towards this new threat, only for Curze put two pinpoint shots through their heads. Gardner flipped the grenade over the trench wall. There was an inhumane scream before it went off, followed by a second, series of larger blasts as the mortar's ammunition was touched off.

"Nice toss" Curze noted as he picked off the last few and Krane tore into the flanks of a second group pinning down Lieutenant Hais' fourth platoon. Gardner spotted a melee ahead; Sergeant Carnigan and his squad desperately trying to hold off a horde of cultists armed with modified farming scythes fused to their hands.

"Up ahead!" he pointed. Krane nodded as they took off.

Koll emerged out of the water at the far end of the ditch behind the first line of trenches, cackling as he gunned down half a dozen cultists too intent upon their exposed prey to notice his arrival. They had made the mistake of attacking in the rain, this was his and anyone else raised in the Root Swamp's element. He swung around, catching a couple of cultists aiming his way with a single shot to each one's chest, then paused for an instant to take a mental snapshot of the battle. Around him his comrades were thrashing through the now knee-deep, blood soaked mud as hell rained down upon them. The tank spearheads and chimeras were rolling in, exchanging fire with the dug in and higher caliber artillery cannons. A Leman Russ equipped with a folding bridge vital for crossing the trenches had its front blown out by a shell that crashed straight through and detonated its engine block. He spun around, checked that the grenade launcher slung under his barrel was loaded, then plunged out and started up a torrent of water pouring down the hill, picking off individual heretics as he went. "Guardsmen on me!" He dove into a shell crater under a las barrage and scrambled to his feet to find two guardsmen already there, cowering against the far wall and half-submerged, their lasguns resting in the water. "On your feet guardsmen" he growled. No response. He kicked the first one in the shoulder, sending him sprawling, "On your feet!" Unsteadily both clambered up, still hunched below the rim of the crater. "Names?"

"Private Donnel" the taller one said.

"Private Garman." A third guardsmen slid into the crater and dropped to her knees as las bolts seared overhead. From her red hair and pale face he recognized her as Corporal Allis of Lieutenant Galloway's sixth platoon.

"My platoon's pinned down back there, there must be a hundred weapons against us alone" she said, doubling over in exhaustion, one hand over a long gash in her forehead.

"We are never pinned, you three are with me we're taking out those cannons so the tanks can clear the trenches" Koll growled. The three troopers nodded, and tried to set their expressions in determination with mixed results. The four of them clambered up the crater wall until they were just below the heretic's line of fire. "On the count of three, we move, find the nearest trench and jump in, we've got fifty yards to the gun emplacements so make it count." Before they could pause to consider the odds of making it up there, he continued. "One, Two, Three!" They threw themselves into the open and tore through the shattered barricades and barbed wire. Before they could react two hulking men with autocannons rose from behind a mound of bodies, and dropped, shot from behind. Behind Koll spotted Shoeggoth and Fury plus a half-dozen others emerge from a trench stuffed with slain heretics.

Krin leapt into the trench with ten men behind him. "Suppress those bolters!" he bellowed, blocking a blow from a scythe-armed cultist. A swift kick took its legs out from under it and brought his lasgun butt down on its face until its stopped moving. Half a dozen more appeared, and charged them. Corporal Crome and Private Holston switched their lasguns to auto and cut them down. Behind them Private Wyre picked off a pair leaning out of cover to get a clear shot. Krin aimed the squad for the nearest heavy bolter, situated thirty yards up the trench line in front of the remains of a Chimera. They barely made it ten feet before half a dozen heretics opened up on them, killing the two point men and driving the rest into cover. "Grenades" he demanded as Corporal Algar kept their heads down with his stubber. Private Meryn handed him two. Krin ripped the pins out and lobbed them over the trench wall just as the cultists were leaping up to try a rush and watched long enough to see the detonation consume them before ordering the advance. They emerged from the trench on the flank of a small dirt rise being used as cover by twenty odd heretics and cut them down, though Holston took two las rounds to the chest as the few on the end of the line spun around, firing blindly.

"Lieutenant, on the left!" Private Orwin called. Krin followed his gaze to the mouth of a trench leading straight back to the target heavy bolter.

"Everybody in" he ordered, leading them towards its open mouth. Two heretics in repainted PDF uniforms emerged directly in his line of fire and he put three rounds into each, leaping over their smoking bodies before they settled in the mud. Their target bolter spotted them and opened up, killing the last two men in and driving them prone to avoid a rain of bolts that blew the trench around them apart and marked their position to every nearby heretic. "On your knees" somehow they kept moving at a crawl.

"Lieutenant look out!" Meryn yelled. Krin looked up just in time to throw himself out of the charge of a frothing monster of a man, his face and biceps replaced by a metal mask and pistons and long chainswords protruding from his hands. Meryn was torn apart before anyone could respond, and even as Krin pulled his gun around using his legs as a makeshift bipod the beast leapt forward. Las bolts had no effect as it leapt onto the screaming and firing Crome, ripping him in half with an explosion of intestines. Wyre's modified lasgun was ripped from his grasp and his body thrown back the way they came like a ragdoll with a single offhand slap. The monster rounded on Alger, who backpedaled shouting wildly as his stubber roared. The beast picked him up even as a lucky lasbolt caught it in the knee, dropping it. It opened its mouth in an ear-wracking roar-and he rammed the barrel of his gun down it firing off the entire ammo reservoir, screaming. It dropped him as it slumped to the ground, only for a dozen berserker heretics to take its place. Krin tried to get to his feet, only for a metal boot to be brought down across his face. The heretic loomed over him, snarling through a mouthful of jagged teeth and pupil less eyes. He reached for the laspistol in his belt, only for it to level an autocannon adorned with chaotic symbols at his chest with a cackle. "Frack you" Krin growled as he waited for the end. Death was cheated however, as the cultist was kicked over him in a shower of blood. Gerring leapt over him, weapon blazing.

"You alright?" he asked as Krin slipped to his feet and joined him in blasting away at the enemy. Further down Alger was advancing towards them, Orwin in tow.

"I'll live, where's your squad?"

"Probably dead, I saw Koll get thrown a good twenty-" he stopped and grabbed his Vox bead, shaking his head. "Or not, he's survived worse."

"Squad, what's your position?" Koll demanded as he ducked beneath a brace of autocannon fire. Allis and Garman picked the five heretics off. Over the vox-bead, his squad rapidly responded. Meanwhile to his left Fury leapt into a trench filled with plasma drill armed berserkers, bellowing that their penance was at hand. He glanced around for targets and spotted two heavy bolters murdering a platoon struggling to cut through a still intact barbed wire fence. "Donnel, take out the further heavy bolter" he instructed, tapping the man on the shoulder and singling out the two targets. The sniper swung his modified lasgun around and put two shots into the gunners. Koll grabbed the trigger of his launcher and pulled. The weapon coughed and spat a black cylinder over the trench wall and into a long arc that ended between the two gunners of the nearer bolter, removing the emplacement in a powerful detonation.

Koll turned his attention back to coordinating his men. "Listen up, Shoeggoth and I are" he glanced around for a landmark. "Ten feet to the left of the purple banner, we've got a straight shot at those artillery turrets but there's a couple bolters covering the last ten yards of trench and we can't get a shot at them, anyone within range?"

Krane glanced around and found the banner. "We're thirty yards to your right Sarge, I can see the batteries." He motioned to Carnigan, who was five feet behind him pumping lasers into a trench with the four survivors of his squad: Rane, Fuller, Tarring, and Kurrior. The heavyset man glanced up. "Koll needs us to take out a couple bolters so he can take those cannons."

"Where?" Krane pointed them out. "Right then, lets move."

"Koll, I'm about thirty yards to your left and I've got the Lieutenant with me" Gerring growled.

"Do you have a shot at those cannon?"

"Aye sir." Gerring watched the trenches climbing all the way up the ridge. His came to within twenty feet of Koll's at the summit, but two guns down, and an idea formed. "We come within twenty feet of your trench"

"Two pronged offensive then, be careful though, they've got fifties covering the gaps." Gerring pulled back from the perch he'd been taking potshots from and turned to the three, no four others with the addition of Corporal Harzan and his much needed melta missile launcher. "Kolls taking the guns, we-" he was interrupted by the scream of the next wave of Valkyries swooping in to cheers from the beleaguered troops below. Those cheers died as a hail of tracer rounds from previously hidden Hydra flack turrets leapt into the sky with devastating results as almost a third of the wing was blown out of the sky before it could respond. Missiles and bolter shells arced over the trenches as they engaged the batteries, very few of which landed amid the trenches. "Down here you stupid fracks!" Gerring bellowed angrily, waving his arms.

"Duck" Krin said, drawing a flair gun. The four men ducked as he fired a glowing red flare over the nearest bolter positions. It took a few seconds, but eventually a Valkyrie streaked out of the sky and fired a pair of missiles almost directly down the barrels of the bolters as they swiveled upwards to meet it. The position vanished in a firestorm, clearing a path. "Now, what about those guns?" An earthshaker, by far the largest cannon within view range, fired. Two Leman Russ maneuvering through a field of concrete barriers vanished in the explosion, taking the entirety of seventh platoon with it. Gerring watched in horror as chunks of them flew out of the top of the plume of mud a second later and fell over a hundred feet into the ranks of the advancing guardsmen.

No time to mourn the doomed. "Koll has a shot at taking out those guns, he thinks we can meet him at the summit in a two pronged offensive." Krin thought for a moment.

"When?"

"As soon as you give the word."

Krin took another glance at the position. There was an abrupt splash and Privates Wallin and Avery and Demolition Sergeant Hawk joined them. "Tell him to lead off and take the heat off us, we've got heavy weapons man and a Demo trooper to blow those guns out." Gerring relayed the orders.

"Understood, lets do this" Koll said. "Advance!" he ordered. In single file, the group pulled their way up the steep trench through a cascade of water. Koll saw Fury and the Shotgun toting Vinncen scaling the bare dirt wall and leaping into a trench branching off on the left. He put a hand forward to grab a protruding metal beam, and pulled it back fast as the autocannon twenty yards ahead opened fire. Behind him Leirin lost his grip with the sudden stop and slid screaming back down. A couple of autocannon rounds nailed him as he skittered out of the trench. "Get those bolters Krane emperor dammnit" Koll barked into the radio.

Krane's ears turned red with the blasphemy as he led his group down a trenchline about two thirds of the way of the ridge. Ahead, he spotted the bolter pinning them down. "Cover me" he growled back, and raised his autocannon to his shoulder. Fifty rounds killed the two gunners while Gardner and Private Sorian pinned down half a doze heretics in the next trench up. A grenade bounced out of the trench and down towards them.

"Why thank you" Carnigan said as he grabbed it. "You're too kind, here I insist," he added as he threw it back. The bomb detonated just as it dropped below the rim of the trench. Krane took out a second bolter, then a third. His autocannon coughed, empty, and he dropped back into cover, fumbling with a fresh box magazine. Curze stepped out and picked off anyone left standing with precision high-power shots. A bolter situated on a small hill opened up behind them, splattering Sorian against the trench wall and pinning everyone else down.

"I can't get a clean shot at it" Curze called, trying to poke his lasgun over the overhand he was crouched beneath. The bolter spotted him and fired. Krane ducked as several rounds landed between them. "Curze!" he yelled as his squad mate disappeared in a cloud of mud and water vapor.


	2. Forwards

Chief Medic Curis sat on a red crate of tourqinettes in a corner of the first aid tent he had set up in the rear of the Fifteenth's trenches, fidgeting with a scalpel. The tent was a whit rectangle about fifty feet by thirty and hosted over a hundred beds. Outside, his three remaining orderlies were standing under awnings set up against the rain and talking in voices muted by grim anticipation, made worse by the immaculately timed thunder of the artillery just behind them and the distant response of the Heretic's own. Curis glanced around at the linen walls, soaking wet and stained with mud but still visibly white. He hated that color. When the walls were read he had men who needed him, he knew what he'd be facing; he'd be able to do something. Now, he was helpless. The entire regiment could be dying right now from gunfire, or mauled by artillery. Or maybe the heretics had brought some backup in the form of bloodletters and Rubric Marines and any minute they'd be receiving several dozen kids carved up by cursed swords. Anticipation gnawed at him. He slipped, slashing his finger open with the scalpel and sending a faint line of blood drops splattering onto a tiny spot on the tent. He fiddled with a small bandage and applied it, all the while relishing the mark he'd made on the tent.

A steady, jarringly close rumble began and he glanced out the tent flap curiously to see a platoon of ten tanks rumbling past, painted the regiment's navy blue with jungle green trim. Captain Morrisson sitting in the lead tank, a Leman Russ Exterminator, called out to him as it trundled past and he responded with a wave. Up ahead the tanks disappeared where the wide dugout they'd set up shop in narrowed into a support trench. Several platoons of infantry sprinting double time followed, and a flight of marauders swooped in low overhead. He watched them go. Imperial Guard infantry regiments didn't normally get their own tanks and air cover, they also weren't told what the Emperor a Daemon Prince was, or given accurate, unbiased information about every faction the Imperium wanted exterminated, unless some Administratium idiot was corrupted and wanted aforementioned regiment taken by the Inquisition and mind-fracked. Kragar was a rarity: a library world, one of perhaps a dozen, whose clean spires and massive mausoleums housed the knowledge of the Imperium and whose citizens lived smarter, better lives than most. "How bad do you think it is up there?" the short, round Narwin asked him from his seat on an empty crate of hydra flak shells.

"Eighty percent casualties, minimum" he responded faintly. The ground shook as a battery of earthshakers a hundred yards back fired a salvo. He had demanded the guns be moved for the sake of his patients, but he was just the doctor, and artillery Captains tended to be brash, loud, and unmovable.

Narwin chuckled, "ain't you the optimist doc, personally I'd say about thirty."

"True, we do have air support and better tanks" Curis wondered how guard regiments from other worlds operated without self-contained close in support, having to call up other units for aid. "I'd say sixty to eighty percent for the Cadians on our right, that idiot Colonel Flauster seems to think tactics consist of pointing his men forward and clogging the trenches with their bodies."

"Aye, poor Cadians" Narwin agreed.

"Doc, we seem to not have any bone saws" Forgal called from a stack of crates sheltered under an awning.

"They're in the dugout, I figured they'd rust out here" he responded. The early twenties former town physician splashed over to the overturned and abandoned Chimera they'd affectionately named 'The Bunker' and used for sleeping and storing sensitive equipment. A moment later he called that he'd found them, then wondered why they were stacked on top of his sleeping bag.

"Do you have something against him?" Narwin questioned, shaking his head.

"Yeah, getting drunk last night and spending until midday to sleep it off, the attack could have come while he was snoozing" Curis responded gruffly.

There was a shout up ahead, and he saw shapes moving in the distance, wobbling and dragging slowly towards them. "Wounded coming" he called, dropping the scalpel into his pocket and stepping outside, letting the freezing downpour soak refreshingly over him. The three orderlies: Narwin, Forgal and Glanner grabbed their gear and sprinted forward to aide whoever was bearing the stretchers and bodies. He had had six orderlies originally, but Jannin had stepped on a landmine and Hellir and Rane were filling for frontline medics who had been selfish enough to die. The train of wounded slowly became visible: mud stained, shell shocked men with expressions ranging from vacant to tearful tottered forward, slathered head to toe in dark brown sludge and mud. A few with only superficial wounds were walking among them, blood dripping from them as any bandages had been given to more severely damaged. The ones on the stretchers were moaning or unconscious, rain and mud pouring off of them in bloody rivulets. These were the artillery victims, the soldiers lacerated by shrapnel or impaled by larger flying debris, the boys and girls with smashed heads and ruptured bellies, blood pouring out of every orifice as the conscious ones tried to scream. He ran forward to help two men bearing a stretcher with a young female Kragarian with twentieth platoon dog tags whose scalp and upper back had been fractured. Her hair was soaked in a bloody soup, her body spasming faintly with ever step. As he splashed up to his knees, he felt a sense of duty rise up inside of him. This was his fight now, his war against death for their souls.

"Get her inside, now, all of you, find a bed and if none is available use the floor and awnings, Narwin an Glanner set up additional shelter if needed!" He barked in a loud, strong voice as he grabbed the stretcher and lead it inside. They reached the first bed and gently lifted the girl into it. "Get me some anesthetics, blue crate," he said to one of the two soldiers, who stumbled off. The other had a fractured hand. He gently flipped the now faintly moaning soldier and began to probe her wound with the scalpel and a long metal rod. By the time he got the painkillers he had removed several jagged pieces of shrapnel and the stream of wounded was pouring in, with a third of the beds already full. The girl sighed and passed mercifully into unconsciousness as he jabbed the needle into her arm. "Needle and thread; cloth bag." He threaded the largest gash, running in a jagged line from the base of her neck halfway down her spine, and began to sew in swift, calculated strokes, blood splattering his hands and navy blue sleeves.

"I got a phosphorous wound here, its still burning him!" Forgal called frantically from ten beds down on the other side.

"Remain calm, use a tarp to cut off the oxygen supply and then apply an antiseptic" Curis called over the steadily rising moan. As he finished that gash and began to clean her skull, Forgal reported success, but then a medic who'd arrived with the remains of his platoon, Gurren if he recalled correctly, needed help wih a collapsed lung and internal aneurysm. The wounded poured in, soaking the tent all shades of red with gore.

By the time the first gunfire casualties had arrived ten minutes later he was running up and down the jam-packed tent, cycling rapidly through his gear. Forgal and Glanner were sloshing through the mud to treat those who wouldn't fit inside; all he had were Gurren and Narwin. A bearded demo trooper missing his stomach, a pleading teenager with blood pouring from where the left half of his face had been ripped off, a female Lieutenant of sixteenth platoon who had taken four rounds to her legs and had bone fragments tearing through her skin. He patched each one up and gave them a quiet "you're going to be okay" before continuing. Fortunately there were no daemonic wounds, though he kept the holy water and inquisitorial supplies on hand just in case. "Sounds like the Colonel went for a full frontal assault, we could get over a thousand people here" Narwin reported as they passed each other.

Within the hour, there were almost three hundred people crammed in, many of them never to leave. Curis ad been numbed to the horrors of war long ago and Narwin who had been on his staff for several years less so, but Forgal and Glanner were on their first campaign, and could barely keep their lunch down.

"Doc over here!" Glanner suddenly shouted. From the terrified tone in his voice Curis knew this wasn't simply an injury he couldn't handle. Grabbing a bottle of holy water, he sprinted across the room, leaping across the bodies lying on the floor.

"What is-" he stopped when he saw the boy. He was a Private, long and lanky and at least six feet tall with red hair and bright eyes. He had taken a bullet to the lungs and every breath he took sprayed out globs of blood as he slowly drowned in it. More than that, he was a Cadian. "Seems like there was some intermingling on the flanks" Glanner whispered. Curis shushed him and got to work.

"We took the trenches, buried them in our bodies." The private said with remarkable clarity. Curis glanced at the dogtag he clutched in a death grip: _Samm Gorin_. "They just kept coming though, and those guns kept firing, our tanks couldn't get through." Curis nodded. "I gotta get back there" he coughed, spraying blood over Curis's face. He didn't stop to wipe it away. "My brother, when that fracker shot me our squad was fighting towards the nearest gun, he had three guys coming at him, I can't leave him," he whispered, voice fading. "Tell me I'm going to be okay doc, tell me," he pleaded, the light in his eyes dimming. "I can't die now, they need me." Curis didn't respond, he couldn't. There was a drawback to knowing secrets no one else could. Before leaving, every Kragar trooper swore a blood oath, carrying the scars with them as a reminder, to, out of fear of the secrets getting out, never speak to an ordinary offworlder, ever. He did what he could for Samm, but he was gone within ten minutes as an artery flooded his lungs. Curis closed his eyes as he moved onto the next patient, the defeat stinging him. Just another kid gone.

…..

Time seemed to slow as Krane fired a couple of loose rounds in the general direction of the enemy, then lunged through the cloud as bolter rounds began to fall around him. Carnigan leapt up, shouting and firing wildly, drawing the bolter's attention. Krane felt his fingers wrap around a leg, and yanked Curze through the mud to cover. He laid him out, desperation rising as he observed the amount of blood streaming down his friend's face and began calling desperately for a medic A hand stopped him, and he turned back to see Curze groaning and wiping away the blood. "Why am I still breathing?" he asked faintly, holding his hand over a gash on his forehead. To Krane's untrained eye it was not immediately fatal, which would do for now.

"No idea, you alright?"

"Apart from feeling like a space marine punched me in the chest I am, but that fracker wont be, he busted my lasgun" he held up a twisted piece of metal with a fractured scope dangling from it. It must've taken most of the impact and been driven back into his chest shattered stock first. Krane was so relieved he couldn't help but chuckle.

"Gardner, you're above him, take that bastard out" Carnigan growled over his bead.

"Cover me" Gardner said simply, and withdrew from his webbing another grenade. An idea formed as he took aim at it and examined the two gunners: one a tiny waiflike girl in a jarringly familiar dress his own sister would've worn, the other a boy, about his age aiming the gun itself, sighting with cybernetic eyes. Maybe they had been lovers before chaos had descended on them. He put that thought out of his mind as he swept his gaze up and down the battlefield. There were still two bolters firing on Koll, and another four within accurate range on the right. "I got a better idea," he said.

"Better be good, Koll's waiting on us."

"I hope it is." Gardner's legs tensed and coiled. With a shout he leapt into the air and crashed down on top of the two gunners, knife drawn. The girl's back was broken as the crashed own on top of her and her partner snarled and swung the gun around, swatting him away. Gardner ducked under his line of fire and grapple at him, pulling himself up and plunging the knife straight into his chest. Gardner cut his hands off the trigger as he collapsed and kicked the body aside.

"Nice one" Krane said as he watched Gardner grab the gun and open fire down the line. Something moved behind him. He shouted a warning and raised his autocannon.

Gardner let out a small gasp of pain as he felt a knife slide into his back. Struggling against the iron grip on his back, he managed to turn around and saw the girl pulling herself almost on top of him with her hands, her tattooed face twisted into a silent howl. "Frack you" he coughed, blood spewing from his mouth, and grabbed the knife. The girl tore at his face with her free hand; a long claw with warp infused serrated talons, lacerating his nose and cheeks. Gardner kicked her away snarling and plunged the knife into her neck. She slid down, and came crawling back up. Gardner tried to grab his lasgun, but his hands weren't responding as he hacked and coughed up blood. She blew apart under the impact of several dozen lasbolts and autocannon shells. He felt a huge hand on his shoulder as he collapsed, and Krane's blurred face was suddenly peering down at him. He was shouting something, as Carnigan and Private Torian grabbed the bolter, but it was muffled.

"Stay conscious private, stay with me!" Krane shouted. Gardner looked at him once, then his eyes closed. Rane dropped down next to the boy and drew out a medikit.

"Krane, we need that autocannon on the left!" Carnigan bellowed. Krane leapt up. Twenty odd cultists were advancing on their tentative position from the left while their newly acquired bolter was preoccupied by thirty more on the right and two remaining bolters.

"Is he going to make it?" he asked Rane as he took aim.

"Assuming that ruptured lung doesn't collapse, probably" he replied shakily, bandaging up the back wound. The twenty-year old Rane had only been an orderly Curis, when he had been called up to the front lines to replace their previous platoon medic when the woman had gotten friendly with an earthshaker round two weeks prior. Incoming fire was a jarring new experience, and it showed on him.

"We'll have to hope so." Krane opened fire. Half the cultists were killed almost immediately and the other half driven to cover. Over his head Curze swung the last heavy bolter around and blew away the final bolter aimed at Koll.

"Koll, Gardner is badly cut up but we've got you covered, you're clear to go." Krane barked.

"Acknowledged." Koll lifted his head out of the trench and spotted the fierce firefight sixty yards away. "Best of luck to you." He slotted another grenade in his launcher. "The path is clear, let's go get them" he said to the men and women ducked low behind him. Fury's chainsaw revved.

"Men of the Imperium, prepare for glory!" he called, charging forward. They scrambled after him. Staying off the main path and using wooden beams protruding from the trench as handholds, the managed to avoid attracting the attention of the preoccupied one-eyed heretic on the six-barreled autocannon until Koll was directly underneath his rotating barrels. Drawing the jagged knife, he reached over to the hand the heretic had on the stabilizer and sliced. The heretic looked down in shock as the monomolecular blade slid effortlessly through his grip, leaving half his hand attached to the weapon. Then Koll seized him and flipped him over the parapet, taking care to hold out the knife for his flailing body to cut itself nearly in two on in a flash of blood as it felt to the trench floor and the flowing water carried it past the ragtag squad. Allis and Shoeggoth leapt up next, firing off steady streams of lasers into the unsuspecting gunners and late-arriving heretic infantry clustered on the flooding plain behind the front line, awaiting orders to advance. The rest of the squad vaulted the parapet and took cover in the rear trenches and behind the emptied ammo trolleys, Private Selwin and Corporal Anin getting kicked back over as they were hit by multiple las bolts. As the volume of incoming fire increased, Koll realized how badly they needed a heavy hitter and grabbed at the autocannon. The tripod mount only swung until the weapon was parallel with the parapet, so he removed the restraining bolts with a couple of nicks from his knife, then swung the gun around to point at its former owners and squeezed the trigger. For a moment there was a pause as the barrels revved up again, giving the nearest heretics time for their eyes to go wide and jaws to drop into immensely satisfying expressions of _oh crap_ on their faces. Then it gave a bloodthirsty roar and vomited a flaming tongue of explosive death. The rearward trenches and their swarming occupants simply vanished into a holocaust of exploding earthworks and sprays of body parts. Koll felt the gun vibrate fiercely in his hands as he swept it up and down their positions with a resounding thunder of disintegrating terrain and men and the hiss of vaporizing runoff. As heretic upon heretic vaporized into a pulpy mass, he felt his heart rise, and as a grin spread across his face a boisterous battle cry bubbled up from his throat and exploded into a gleeful shout. "Where's your gods now motherfrackers!" he roared, emptying the weapon. Vinncen targeted the furthest loaded ammo trolley, detonating it and a dozen heretics in a forty-foot pillar of flame that rained burning embers down upon them and illuminated every raindrop into a striking cascade of orange baubles. Donnel and Garman exchanged worried looks as every cultist with two hundred yards (a considerable number) spun and charged towards their little group. Shoeggoth put reassuring hand on their shoulders one at a time as behind him Fury exhorted Koll on.

"It's going to be alright" he said quietly, and then returned to firing. Somehow they believed him.

….

Colonel Garm Wolfe hunkered down in what had until recently been an artillery dugout until the gun had been melted by a misfiring inferno shell, amap of the battle spread out before him as second line infantry from the Fourth Battalion and additional tanks drove past on their way to the meat grinder that had become their attack. An artillery shell whistled overhead and detonated amid a squad, dismembering the lot. Wolfe cursed; this wasn't what he had planned. He had anticipated the enemy's defenses after the first spy plane not to get shot down reported enemy reinforcements moving to the front two days ago and decided that the artillery would, through several days of prolonged fire make a wide ditch from the line through the heretics positions and cover it, but no, Lord-General Buelle had demanded that thee entire front advance in a human wave when it turned out that the soon arriving reinforcements were in fact close to a million in number. As he watched a tank lose a tread in another explosion and slide into a communications dugout, crushing several guardsmen with a scream Wolfe promised to make Buelle into a servitor and use it to murder the Munitorium fracker that had decided to put the general known for killing more of his own than the enemy in charge of the finest tactical unit in the Imperium. "Colonel, Major Werner reports that he's taken thirty yards of trenches but has been stopped by a fire lane and is requesting air support" his aide, the dark-skinned Captain Dorlan reported in a deep, guttural voice from his seat beside him.

"Good, grant him anything we have left in reserve and allocate the third artillery and six platoons of the fifth battallion to support his push" he said, then glanced down at the map as Dorlan complied. Five regiments had been ordered to batter the heretic's out of their positions protecting the second largest city on the planet twenty kilometers behind their lines: The Salvian twenty-second penal regiment on the extreme left, west actually, then the hitherto untried Airys thirty-fifth, then his beloved Kragarian fifteenth. The Cadian Four-hundred second was being butchered as they crashed into the high cliffs on their right, and finally, the Kragarian ninth. The only one of the bunch with a chance to leave the day with under fifty percent casualties, the ninth, under the command of erstwhile glory-hunter Colonel Demnin had been given a nice, flat and wide valley to assault that doubled as a road straight through the corner of the heretic's lines and towards the city, divided three miles back by a small town. It would be a hard day.

On the right, James Werner had the first battalion while Captain Leo Surrin lead the second up the middle and Colonel Kardin Avard took the right. True to tradition of fighting tactically in the rear, Wolfe was leading the fourth and fifth battalions forward to hopefully exploit any gains. There was nothing else he could do really. His staff Chimera, undecorated to avoid attracting unwanted attention abruptly pulled up. "I see you got that engine fixed!" Wolfe called as he stood up, brushed himself up, and walked around to the open hatchway in the back.

"Barely, a couple of bullets through the casing and we're stuck" the driver, techpriest Viado said in an emotionless voice. Wolfe and Dorlan climbed into the back, and dropped their collection of maps onto the table in the center. "Lets move then." Dorlan's vox squawked, reporting that Werner's air support was taking a beating from enemy flak cannon. Wolfe set about directing the battle as the Chimera rolled off, joining the second wave of vehicles and men pushing through.

Below Carnigan glanced up at the firefight brewing, stray las bolts and bullets flying over the ridge-top. The slope was clear, and the Fifteenth was moving up though the tanks were still held up. "Think they need us?" Krane asked. Below, Gardner was being borne away by lightly wounded Private Joune, as Corporal Gaskin took his place; one of the growing tide of mud-soaked soldiers advancing through the remaining enemy fire.

"Koll and a couple others versus several thousand heretics and possible armor?" Carnigan asked.

"I think we can take a nap" Curze said.

"What, are you afraid of death?" Carnigan demanded incredulously. "Forward! Krane on point."

Krin's group hit the crest of the ridge a minute later and sliced through the flank of the unaware heretics. Gerring and Orwin lead off. Gerring dropped into the trench rapidly and began firing, Orwin however waited a second longer and took a las bolt to the side, knocking him backwards against the dugout wall where he lay soaking in a slowly reddening puddle screaming for his mother. Algar dropped his stubber onto a bipod and lay down a curtain of fire while the rest of the squad went over the top. Krin took one last glance behind him before leaping: incredibly enough the troopers were making headway through the storm of infantry fire and fire from the tanks that were beginning to show up, clawing their way up the ridge by their teeth with long range tank shells and the occasional successful Valkyrie strike carving out handholds. Then he leapt and his view was replaced by a tangle of dying heretic bodies. "Harzan, take out any gun on the right you can reach, Hawk start wiring the ones on the left to go, Wallin and Avery cover him!"

Harzan dropped his launcher into a helpful 'V' formed by a shattered cart axel, checked to make sure his backwash wouldn't roast his own men, then took aim at the Earthshaker; six cannon down. He let out a shout as he pulled the trigger and with an even louder roar the rocket winged away. The entire gun platform vanished in a fireball as it hit home, kicking the gun high in the air through a halo of human and inorganic matter. A second, larger fireball consumed the guns on either side of it as its ammunition was touched off by the heat. Harzan pumped a fist in celebration, and then loaded a second rocket. His next missile didn't cause as big an explosion, but was still more than enough to rip the breach of the 150 millimeter cannon open and send red-hot shrapnel slicing through the nearest heretics. Harzan ducked down and loaded again as on the other side Hawk began setting up demolition charges. Koll elevated the barrel of the minigun and eased off the trigger as he sprinted past. To his dismay, Harzan's next shot went wide, soaring high over the cannon to vanish into the misery. He cursed and checked his ammo: three rockets.

Koll heard the explosion as Harzan's next round hit home and let out a victory cry that was rendered premature immediately after as the minigun coughed and slowed to a standstill: empty. "I'm out" he called, and then dropped into the trench, searching for another magazine as the volume of gunfire began to pick up. A rocket whipped overhead, demolishing the minigun position for good measure. Koll cursed and ducked low. He was joined as Private Airen and Sergeant Panner crawled through the crater. A third man, who's face he'd never see dropped halfway through as autocannon rounds blew his head and shoulders off in a red and white spray.

"Charges are armed, get-" Hawk disintegrated three guns down, hit by a volley of flak rounds. A truck-mounted Hydra battery trundled forward, a traitor tank on either side. Avery slid into a ditch as a tank round whistled in overhead. Behind him Wallin, caught between two stacks of ammunition, didn't make it all the way and his left leg was torn clean off by the blast. Screaming and sobbing, he plunged into the mud, clutching at the profusely bleeding stump. Avery could do nothing but lay down wild fire at the steadily growing mob of cultists.

"Hawk is gone, I can't get the charges!" he yelled frantically over the line.

Koll looked up from his white-hot lasgun. He could see a faint red light on the limpet mine glinting through the rain. "Garman, set those bombs off!" he ordered. Garman crawled forward to the edge of the trench and raised his rifle over the shattered wooden parapet. He sighted down the scope. This was it, his one big chance to be a hero. He squeezed the trigger-and simply splattered into the wind along with a chunk of the ridge in a maelstrom of forty-millimeter flak rounds as the opened fire. Donnel screamed his name, and became the next victim as a wooden splinter an inch thick impaled him through his left shoulder. Allis dragged him clear. Sergeant Tellir's entire squad met a similar fate as they crested the ridge.

"Harzan, take that warp-blasted scum out!" Krin bellowed, ducking into the bottom of the trench as the Hydra opened up on his group next. A tank round whistled overhead but went wide and bolters rounds began detonating, blowing chunks out of the earth. Harzan snapped up and fired off his last rocket. It was a blind shot at best, but much to everyone's surprise, as if guided by an angel the krak-missile whipped through the air-and hit the flank of the Leman Russ advancing to blast them out of their hiding spots, bouncing off and flipping through the air before detonating harmlessly overhead. Harzan groaned. The looming tank's next shot turned his upper half into a severed stump trailing strands of meat.

"Anyone out there!" Krin demanded. A pair of Valkyries, seeing their plight swooped in. The Hydra, nimbly piloted, simply swung around and blew one out of the sky. The other managed to demolish the steadily bearing down Russ just meters from his trench with a burst of fire from its twin-linked laser emitters and flew off. Krin drew another flare and desperately fired it. "Anyone?"

The four guns to Koll's left detonated one after the other in a glorious plume of fire and molten metal that singed the stubble off his face and vaporized the rain into a thick fog. Avery died, immolated by the conflagration and Wallin was badly singed. Through the pain clouding his vision he spotted the white-hot rim of a cannon barrel splash down nearby, instantly vaporizing several dozen liters of water. With a scream through his tears and clenched teeth, he dragged himself forward over the bodies of a pair of female heretics and shoved the stump of his leg into it, cauterizing the wound with a sickening hiss and a fresh explosion of pain that finally caused him to black out, collapsing onto a pillow of festering flesh.

"Thought you could use a hand" Krane said as he emptied the rest of his autocannon's contents into the heretics, then ducked in to reload. Carnigan led his squad through the flaming wreckage, shielded temporarily from view of the Hydra. They dropped into the trenches whooping and proceeded to eat the heretics alive with las bolts. As if to counterbalance this an Annihilator, patrolling the top of the ridge spotted them and rumbled forward. Fuller and tarring were fried by its first shot. The hydra rolled forward to finish the job-and blew apart spectacularly. On his right, Koll saw a vast, indecipherable something looming out of the smoke. It solidified into a Conqueror thrashing forward to taste its enemies. A demolisher emerged on Koll's left and swiveled around to face the annihalator. Both fired, dieing together in mutual conflagration. The guardsmen began to cheer as additional tanks poured over the ridgeline, demolishing the remaining defenses and tanks as they tried to make a stand. The footsoldiers followed, first a trickle prodded along by Captain Surring and Fury's shouts, then a steady stream. Koll and Fury led the charge into the trenches, a full platoon of tanks on his flanks.

"Lieutenant" Krin glanced up from slotting a frech clip into his lasgun to see Surring staring down at them from a jaunty perch on the smoldering remains of the nearest heretic Leman Russ.

"Pleased to report foothold is secure" Krin reported automatically.

"I know, good job, now lets finish them." They joined the blue and brown tide, barking orders.

….

"General, Surring reports he's punched a whole and his men are moving in en masse, fifth platoon in the lead. He's requesting all available support to carry the battle," Dorlan said. Wolfe's eyes, steadily grown darker with each setback into the past twenty minutes, lit up.

"Order fourth battalion to support him, tell Morrisson to hit them on the flank and roll them up" Wolfe barked.

"We're not sending him everything?"

Wolfe shook his head, sighing; Surring could never see the entire battlefield, just his own little war. "No, fifth is to back up Werner, make sure he doesn't lose anymore ground." The Chimera jolted but kept going while Viado uttered several prayers to the machine-god in the front.

"Should I inform the Lord-General?"

"Not yet" Wolfe grinned. "Wait till we've advanced half a mile, I don't wnt to waste any more men."

"Good thinking." The fifteenth was ever so slowly pounding a hole in the heretic's line, waves of infantry washing resistance away. He might just have a relatively operational unit on his hands by nightfall, a first under 'butcher' Buelle.

….

Tzet-Rhen surveyed the battlefield, watching the countless minions and their war machines he had tricked into joining him dying by the hundreds as the corpse-god worshippers overran them, screaming vicious war cries, maneuvering through the defense networks with a tactical skill uncommon for such mortals. Nonetheless, Tzet had counted on them getting through, though not this soon. He adjusted his plan. "All according to plan" he whispered before teleporting away, savoring the way the words rolled in his mouths and felt on his fanged tongues. "Al according to plan."

As he advanced, now reunited with his squad, Gerring squinted into the fog with his newly acquired scoped las rifle. In the distance, he saw a faint shape, of an odd design that put him uneasy. It solidified for an instant, then vanished. Gerring, a man who had faced down tyranid lictors with nothing but a pistol and had been faced by Ork gargants, collapsed to the ground writhing and screaming in the mud as his squad gathered around in confusion and desperately tried to calm him.

In the center of fourth battalion, now at the original front lines, men keeled over with putrid blood pouring from their eyes and noses and tanks ground to a halt and rusted on the spot. With a deafening shriek of bloodlust, fifteen Khornate berserkers, five rubric marines and a host of daemons led by a Bloodletter teleported into the battle.


	3. Crushing Force

Wolfe sat amid the wreckage of the bunker he was using as his command post, clutching one hand over his left thigh where shrapnel from the exploding Chimra had ripped through flesh and muscle and cracked the bone beneath. Beside him Dorlan was having the fractured chunks of his skull set by a fourth battalion orderly named Origas. Viado was curled up inside a disabled salamander that had slid in before they arrived, tending to his shattered tools and sockets. A torn and bloodstained map of the positions the fifteenth had managed to hold was unfurled before him and weighted down by four empty las pistol magazines he had expended shooting from the ditch he had fallen into at the bloodletter while it chewed through a column of loaded chimeras. His sword was mangled in its holster, melted into a useless hunk by an imp's blood when it had stepped unwarily beside his position and he had stabbed at it. Wolfe glanced around with dead eyes. Guardsmen were streaming through the bunker, many wounded and bloodstained, all soaked dark brown in mud. A Leman Russ rumbled rearwards outside, through the shrapnel holes in the wooden partition Wolfe could see its turret gone. Above the wail of the wounded and the grind of machinery, he could hear the artillery-the batteries left unscathed-firing indiscriminately into the enemy lines to prevent their jeering masses from following the retreat back. Wolfe wondered how many abandoned wounded got to be sacrifices tonight to please the thirsting gods, his responsibility, and his failure.

"What's the situation manpower wise?" Wolfe asked the four tacticians seated around a stack of emptied medical crates pouring over charts and data slates.

"You better read this yourself" Staff Captain Amin Illiun said, getting up and handing him a dataslate. Wolfe read it, mentally slowly shutting down along the way. Four thousand men still in condition to bear arms, including the walking wounded. Two thousand were dead or missing outright and another thousand were casualties, many of which would die in the ensuing days. Fourth battalion was at forty percent effectiveness, and Wolfe quickly ordered for it to take up guarding the artillery and baggage. The other four battalions had fallen back to their original positions. Tanks were at half-strength and wrecks were being salvaged.

"Nearly half the regiment gone, for nothing" Wolfe murmured, dropping the slate on the table. A bloodied squad from third battalion, twentieth platoon stumbled past: half a dozen thousand yard stares and blank, shell-shocked faces.

"If it matters colonel, the Cadians and Airys took sixty percent apiece, we're not the worse off here" Amin tried to encourage him.

"Great, so now we have on paper only regiments guarding our flanks, get the remaining armor to anchor the extreme ends of our lines incase they break in the next assault" Wolfe ordered. "And tell Magos Helindral and his tech priests to comb the trenches for any more hidden teleporters."

"Already on it, they've been at it since the last daemon died." Wolfe nodded, somewhat relieved that his officers could still think. It could have been worse, he admitted to himself as a commandeered flatbed carrying several dozen mangled guardsmen from the front rolled past outside, adding its heaving engine to the steady murmur of the cries of the wounded and soldiers searching for their comrades.

It could have been worse. He had to admit. The Kragar ninth and the Salvians had lost their entire armored support in one fell stroke to teleporting attacks. Captain Morrison had been delayed getting to the front, and so had been directly behind the onslaught instead of amidst it and bore the brunt of the assault long enough for Wolfe to reluctantly pull the entire regiment back. Better to have reinforcements and no gains than be caught unsupported in a salient. Morrison had suffered though, and had three tanks left in his own platoon and another thirty, out of sixty from the battalion.

"Colonel, the heretics have started the assault, all commanders report morale is close to breaking, and-"

"Where's Fury?" Something in the man's distraught expression answered Wolfe's question.

"Fury was last seen leading the assault with elements of the fifth platoon, he has been reported MIA along with its Lieutenant and most of the men, presumed dead." Wolfe sighed and sagged.

_You are an officer of the Imperium so act like one!_ He imagined Fury scolding him, giving his weary body enough fire to continue. Wolfe glanced down at his leg, which was soaked red and would be life-threatening soon, and Origas was still busy saving Dorlan's life. He glanced around and singled out a relatively intact squad regrouping by the corner. It took him a moment to recognize their leader: "Sergeant Karfan" he called. The bearded man looked up and snapped into an exhausted, sloppy salute, his five guard soldiers following suite a moment later. "Find me a Chimera and another medic, I need to get to the front," he ordered over the din. "Amin keep me updated." He grabbed a vox set off the table, pulled a staff Lieutenant out of the crowd, and handed it to him. "You're with me-Maverin" he said, recognizing the missing nose, then turned to where Viado was healing.

"As you wish sir," the three men responded simultaneously.

…

Vinnecen poked the gaping muzzle of his shotgun around the corner, sweeping the dugout with the beam of his under barrel luminator. To his relief there was nothing there but deep puddle in the center of a widening in the tunnels and a horrific altar to the ruinous powers. "Clear" he whispered back, and leapt in, aiming down the nearest trench opening. Eight men followed him quietly but swiftly. Koll was immediately behind, limping badly on his left leg but still determined. Then came Krane and his autocannon, then Shoeggoth and Krin, both somehow impervious to mud and fatigue. Gerring followed, growling with more fear than anger, his eyes darting side to side frantically. Bringing up the rear were Curze and Rane leading a barely conscious Donnel, Allis who seemed to be in a daze, and a barely recognizable man, covered as he was in gore and injuries: Fury, still strong enough to boot the rear of anyone lagging behind.

"Ignore the shrine" Koll warned in a barely-controlled voice. No one was going near the semi-submerged swirling portal of iconography and glowing architecture. As they skirted the edge of the cursed waters, there was a faint splash amidst there depths. Gerring glanced over- and leapt back several feet with a jarring splash. Krin spun around and grabbed him, glaring.

"Something moved in there," Gerring explained in a shaking voice.

"Ignore it." Another, louder splash in the center of the altar. Koll tried to look away but something drew his gaze: mangled bodies clouding the water with their blood, slowly being devoured by glistening blue fish with oversized jaws full of teeth protruding from their heads. "Keep moving damnit" he growled, unwittingly letting fear slip into his strained voice as the column began to come to a halt. How far had they gone? Must have been at least three miles since they had been cut off by the retreat, and no sign of heretic or loyalist, just winding trenches filled with steadily more intricate altars. They had destroyed the first, dry few before realizing just how many there were and the danger of them attracting attention. He was just the third in command here. Krin was the ranking officer and tactical leader, but in actuality Fury was leading them through sheer force of will and his bolter pistol.

"What do you think they're doing with those?" Krane whispered as they passed the next altar twenty yards down. Fearful glances out of the corners of their eyes revealed that this one had the bodies impaled on spears poking out of the water. Only their torsos and half-rotten faces remained uneaten.

Koll shrugged. "Don't think about it," he warned.

They rounded the corner-and came upon a semicircle of heretics, their faces ground off into featureless bloody horrors, seated cross-legged around an unlit altar in a depression, swaying in unison, watched over by five red clad khornate cultists with carpace armor covered in the boy parts of their victims. A surprisingly elegant female priest with glowing eyes was chanting, and one by one the runes on the altar began to light as water gushed into the depression from emperor knew where. A strange chill crept over the men as they hid unnoticed in the trench.

The squad froze up, each man too terrified to act as a glowing whirlwind of energy sprang up over the altar, crackling with the power of the warp. Then Fury came up. "Why are they not dead yet? You afraid to die?" he growled, aiming his bolt pistol at the priestess. "Or do you need a reminder that you are guardsmen?"

_Its not the dying I'm worried about, that would be rather nice compared to what chaos would do to me. _Koll glanced at Krin, who nodded. "Koll, take Gerring, Shoeggoth, and Allis and flank them on the left, Krane you're with me on the right, we'll catch them in a crossfire, the rest of you watch the rear and wounded." They waited until the guards were all facing the priestess, then crept out. Koll led his group up a small rise on the edge of the bunker where they fanned out and took aim. Krin took Krane left, behind some twisted metal.

"On my mark" Fury said, taking aim. Koll saw him pull the trigger out of the corner of his eye and a low whoosh. He didn't wait to see it hit as he opened fire on the two nearest guards. The silence exploded as they gunned down the heretics in three brutal seconds, mutilating their bodies beyond recognition of humanity. Koll shifted his aim to the altar to see the priestess swaying on her feet behind a glowing personal shield, gathering up a ball of warp fire in her outstretched hands, face twisting into a hideous silent scream. Fury put two more bolts into the shield, then as she raised her arms to smite him a fourth blew her head off. The warp fire, unguided by psychic touch shot skyward in a roaring pillar of flame that blinded them and caused exposed flesh to blister.

Gradually, it faded. To be replaced by the sound of the startled shouts of several hundred cultists and the splash of several hundred feet sloshing through the wet ground, steadily growing closer. "Up the trench!" Fury ordered. No one needed additional prompting. They sloshed up the trench, passing multiple side passages winding off and increasingly incomplete altars. Splashes behind them and flickering shadows in the faint light of the dying flames indicated swarms of heretics leaping into the trenches. Cries of pain sorrow billowed out as they found the altar, catching up to the squad as it ran, followed by roars of anger.

"I think we made them a bit angry" Curze managed to gasp out between labored breaths. Behind them, the splashing grew louder. More shouts, this time from ahead.

"Hold up we're surrounded!" Krin yelled, bringing them to a halt twenty yards from the nearest side passage. He felt his heart rate rising as the enemy closed in, growing louder and more inhuman with each second. "We need a place to hide, these side passages won't do, they dug them," he said frantically, whirling around. The men leapt into action, digging through the mud with bare hands and bayonets while Koll and Krane took aim in either direction. If they were trapped they would be sure to take several times their number with them. Allis kicked aside several submerged rotting wooden beams and painfully hit metal with the toe of her boot. Bending down for a look, she probed blindly with her fingers, wrapping her hands around a two foot circular disk. Lifting, it came away with a sharp sucking noise and water began to flow downwards.

"I've got us a manhole of some sort" she called, examining the cover. A single star was engraved in the center. Something in the back of her mind recalled that it was the planet's crest.

"Water aqueduct from the river to the main city, this must be a maintenance hatch" Fury said. Krin wasted no time in ordering everyone in. Flickering shadows began to appear in the edges of their swirling luminator beams. Vinnecens leapt in first. He passed through the cascade of water and dropped seven feet before landing hard on his knees, wincing. A frantic sweep of the tunnel told him that it was empty save for a trickle of water running a foot from where he kneeled.

"Clear!" he called up. Allis came next, followed by Rane and Donnel, who hit the ground and collapsed, sobbing.

Koll spotted something: a person standing on the lip of the trench at the next bend, facing away. He raised his las-rifle. Three eyes flashed, and it turned, no, jerkily swiveled like a poorly made automaton to face him. The body he had seen was only a massive round head with six triangular eyes. It smiled, and reared up, revealing it to be so tall it was in fact standing in the next trench over. "Daemon!" he yelled, and pulled down the trigger. The weapon coughed unhealthily and spat a volley of lasbolts at the creature, which merely opened its mouth and _ate_ them. It clambered onto the elevated ground, revealing a skeletal avian body twelve feet high and twisted wings. Krane and Fury opened fire as Gerring and Curze dropped into the tunnel, leaving only Krinand Shoeggoth with them. Its eyes flashed, and suddenly Koll was sailing through the air, smashing into the ground ten feet away, his lasgun sliding from his grasp. He glanced up just in time to see a Tzeentch flamer teleport onto the rock beside him. It spun around, maws glowing with eager flames as he dragged the las pistol from its socket. He fired a split second earlier, the red beam of the emperor's fury kicking the daemon onto its back, flames spewing into the air from its spiteful mouths as they desperately grasped for the prey they had been cheated of. He put three more shots into it before it stopped moving and spun around just in time to see Fury and Krane back to back, beating down three more. A fifth materialized above them, and he put six shots into its writhing body, killing it messily.

"They're in the trench!" Krin was shouting. Koll spotted him backed up against the wall, firing into the first group of heretics to round the bend on his side. Overhead, the Daemon, visibly angered by the death of its brethren began to gather up a ball of warp fire.

"Get into that tunnel now" Koll ordered, snatching up his las-rifle. A sixth flamer leapt up beside him only for Shoeggoth to kill it in the first shots of his incredibly accurate barrage in the opposite direction. The first bolt of flames singed Koll's helmet top off as it narrowly missed him. He fired a grenade at the daemon, which it simple deflected with a ten-fingered hand. Krane and Shoeggoth dropped down first and second, and then Fury shoved a protesting Koll inside. He crashed to the cement below on his bad leg with a wince then began shouting incoherently upwards with concern for the men he had unwillingly abandoned. They stood, silhouetted in the rim, firing with bolter and las. A spindly shadow projected over them, and Krin leapt forward, shoving Fury down. Koll rolled to avoid him as he landed heavily. Krin tried to make the jump, but something grabbed him. He let out a scream, face twisted in terror as with an explosion of red the daemon's hands filleted his flesh from his bones. Koll and Gerring screamed and began firing upwards as a that hideous face appeared in the opening, and would have kept firing until it came for them had Allis and Krin slammed the manhole shut and welded it in with prolonged las-fire.

"Sergeant!" Fury held out a hand. Koll took it and was pulled upright. He would have fallen again had Shoeggoth not grabbed his shoulder. Though he was as emotionless as ever, the rest of the squad was horrified by Krin's demise. "You're in command. These aqueducts go straight to the-" he was cut off by a screech as a long talon stabbed straight through the manhole cover.

"Fall back" Koll ordered. He stopped Gerring from setting up a pressure-activated tube charge, "waste of explosives." The group turned back down the way that seemed to lead towards their lines.

"Other way, we advance!" Fury ordered. The talon began to saw away the manhole. They ran onwards, deeper into enemy terrain with nothing but their luminators lighting up the dark tunnels ahead and each other for protection against what lay inside.

….

Wolfe peered out at the advancing tide of heretics through his field binoculars from his position in a dugout just behind the main trench. For a moment his vision was obscured by a red and brown fountain as an earthshaker round disintegrated several dozen heretics, then the nonstop wave of running men pushed through the plume, charging headlong into the regiment's barrage of las fire and bolter shells with predictably fatal results. A call for ammunition went up from the twenty-third platoon three hundred yards down and he assigned one of the loaded ammunition haulers to them. He frowned, at the rate they were going they'd be out of ammo within five hours.

"We can get a couple convoys from the resupply drops brought up by nightfall" Amin said.

"Do that then, and am I really becoming that readable?" Wolfe said.

"You were mouthing 'ammo' sir, it doesn't get much easier to decipher than that." Wolfe nodded, slightly embarrassed. The lines ahead lit up as the basilisks fired a volley of inferno shells, momentarily staving off the assault while the mountains of bodies were scorched by flaming pyerite. A heavy bolter team began setting up their weapon a meter down, then saw him and leapt away.

"No, go ahead, you get a good vantage point from here" he hurriedly corrected them. They saluted and dropped to their knees, folding out the weapon's tripod and setting it up on top of a half-submerged sandbag. The gunner fired a couple shots off to clear the barrels.

"Wolfe, you better hear this, the Salvians are getting fracked up the rear" Staff sergeant Ellian Grimmnar reported, one ear pressed to a Vox-reciever.

_Frack_. "Watch your language, and let me hear." Wolfe leaned over, careful to avoid ripping the hastily done stitching on his leg, and took the link.

"I repeat, the heretics have heavy armored support, they're flanking us on the left" a voice called. Several other colonels and Buell were talking in the background. Wolfe hit the receiver once, letting out a short burst of static to announce his presence. He heard a second as Demnin did likewise, then much to his surprise four more in rapid succession. "The entire east wing is going to be cut off, they have baneblades and Rubric marines, where is our heavy armor?" the voice called, more panicked now. Wolfe winced: they _were_ in the eastern wing.

"Captain Laurit, where is your colonel?" Buell demanded, ignoring the situation.

"Dead, his chimera was disabled and a Baneblade rolled over it; we need any heavy armor you can provide" Laurit practically screamed back. Gunfire and shouting became audible in the background.

"The Armageddon heavy armor is busy leading the assault on the western wing, can you hold for six hours?" Buelle replied curtly.

"We can hold for ten minutes, twenty tops, our tanks are running out of augur mark two rounds."

"All commanders, begin preparations for a potential rapid withdrawal" Wolfe ordered over his own Vox. Several dozen officers ranging from the embattled Werner to acting Lieutenant Carnigan replied with a chorus of acknowledgements and the occasional question. _Good men think about their orders_.

Buelle was speaking again. "All regiments heading for the eastern front, redirect to back up the Salvians, I want that front secure!" he bellowed with unnecessary force.

"They have a titan, I repeat, they have a-." Laurit was cut off by the deafening roar of a plasma cannon of gargantuan proportions.

"There's maybe twenty heavy tanks in the entire force, it'll be a slaughter" General Bringler of the Laritian Hundred-Second armored protested. Several other generals including the Narmenian General Bradley voiced their agreement.

"Then we will form a human wall to meet them, now get on it before I have your commissars execute you for disobeying a direct order." The line ended. Wolfe winced in sympathy for the affected regiments, which a quick glance at the dataslate in his hand revealed included the Kragarian fiftieth armored regiment.

"So what are the heretics up to?" Amin asked, his fellow staffers staring at Wolfe expectantly.

"The enemy has sent in the cavalry to flank us, as cavalry is usually used for. Buelle should've known that they'd try this. Rather than defend properly against what appears to be an onslaught of Baneblades and leviathans, he has opted to drown them in our reinforcements." Amin sighed.

"How predictable" Ellian noted dryly.

"Aye, and knowing the way Tzeentch thinks, he's probably got some other-" Wolfe's eyes crossed as something horrifying occurred to him. "The Cadians and Airen are the weakest links on the line, correct?"

"Aye."

"Then wouldn't an attack be likely to come in their sector?" the gears were turning rapidly now in his brain. "Which means, what if the assault on the Salvians and whoever is on their flank is just a diversion to draw off any reinforcements?" A plan formed in his mind.

"Then we would have a major problem, but why? He can just massacre our people easily enough from there."

"Because we can always send in more reinforcements, retaking territory is a challenge. We stormed their initial defenses by surprise when we landed, next time they'll know we're coming" Amin cut in.

"Exactly, we need to get this to Buelle, where's that inquisitorial interpreter when you need him?"

"He left a couple days ago, and there won't be another inquisitor here until we've retaken that city." Wolfe sighed resignedly and flicked through the vox channels until he found the one specifically designated for the Kragarian units. The fires began to die down and the heretical assault started up again, thousands of bodies charging through the fog.

"This is Colonel Wolfe, fifteenth, can anybody hear me?" he asked. It took a couple minutes before replies came in from the half-dozen regiments on world and a seventh still in its transports, yet to deploy. "I believe that a large assault is going to come withing my sector within the next few hours and you heard Buelle's orders. Is there anyway you could sneak a couple companies over to shore us up a bit? We're running at about two-thirds strength at the moment?" Three regiments, the twentieth, hundred-fifth, and ninth airborne were on the opposite side of the beachhead, but promised to offer a few air units.

"I'll spare a couple of tank companies" General Nallin of the fiftieth promised.

"Our reserves showed up, we'll send them your way" Domnin said. "You owe us one though."

"I'll buy you some liquor when we take their capital" Wolfe promised, "and a couple Baneblades." Kragars always watched each other's backs in foreign lands.

"I'll hold you to that." Wolfe closed the line and returned to directing the battle. Morrisson began to dig his tanks into a two-tiered defensive line, the infantry still in the rear were ordered to double time. A beam of sunshine broke through the clouds. Wolfe gazed upwards.

"At least it stopped raining."

…...

"Have you ever been in a cave?" Curze asked to nobody in particular as they trudged through knee-deep water. Thirty minutes had passed and the tunnel seemed to have no end.

"Nope, I lived in a space station" Allis said. Gerring had blown the tunnel shut twenty five ago, ending any chance of pursuit.

"Several, but dry ones" Krane said. His farm had had a couple of natural caves under it.

"You wouldn't believe how many, our mine punched through a natural cave system and they sent the kids into the smaller tunnels, I was ten" Vinncens said. He adjusted his small handlebar moustache with one hand.

"Sounds fun" Curze remarked dryly. He stumbled in a small pothole, sending his luminator beam flickering over the tunnel wall.

"It was, until we found the genestealer hive." He sighed, Krane put an arm on his shoulder, Rane cursed, Koll shook his head.

"I remember that, my first combat assignment, got to watch half my platoon get eaten alive" Koll said. Vinncens held a hand back and he shook it.

"That's where I found this" Vincenns said as he held up the red painted shotgun, "I spent a week hiding in this little cave where a couple guardsmen had made a last stand. I killed twenty genestealers with it." He brushed away some mud on the receiver to reveal a name scrawled in red paint. "Anyone known anyone called Cal Murnin?"

"Nope." The tunnel abruptly ended with a solid steel vault door. Fury steeped forward and examined it as the others fanned out around him.

"Looks like some kind of pneumatic security door," he ran his fingers across a series of pipes running across the outside of the frame. "Only openable from the other side judging by the lack of a handle, we're stuck." He kicked something in the shadows and bent down to examine it: a doorknob.

"Well what do we do now?" Gerring demanded. Behind him, Donnel collapsed into the water. Allis and Rane pulled him back up.

"Blow that door off its hinges" Koll suggested, pulling out a tube-charge.

"And bring the tunnel down on top of us" Fury objected, playing his luminator over the cracks in the ceiling. He took one step to the left-and his leg plunged into an unseen hole. "What the?" Koll and Vinncens leapt forward and pulled him back up, completely soaked.

"Well that must be the actual aqueduct" Koll said, shining his light into the foot-wide hole. Water swirled beneath in a pipe of unknown girth. "You think I could use that to get around the door?"

"You're insane, you'll freeze in ten minutes" Gerring protested. Koll stripped off his gear webbing, flak vest, and boots and handed them to Krane. "

"I'll drown in four if this fails" Koll responded. He stripped off his jacket and flack vest and handed them to Krane, leaving himself with a T-shirt and pants. He twisted the luminator off his weapon and put it in his belt with the knife and las-pistol.

"He knows what he's doing" Fury said, "A model guardsman we have here, take note."

"Suicidal" Gerring whispered. Shoeggoth elbowed him.

"What happens if there's guards on the other side?" Allis asked.

"Then I suppose they'll be wishing they weren't when I'm done with them. " Koll assured her. He clenched his arms to his sides, took a deep breath, and jumped. His nose scraped the stone as he splashed into the frigid, pitch back waters. Pulling his mouth tight over any loose air bubbles, he kicked forwards. The aqueduct expanded at least five meters into either direction and dropped far out of sight below him. Something brushed his rhythmically thrashing feet, and he recalled the fish. He swam about six meters down then played his light across the blank ceiling, nothing. His lungs began to ache and the cold was already numbing him. He kept going as his chest began to burn, contrasting painfully with the icy tendrils worming their way into him, how long had he been under? Two minutes? He kicked two more times and fumbled with the knife, even he knew he could never cut a hole in the now minute and a half he had left. Then he spotted it: a small gap in the ceiling, barely the size of the one he had entered in. Spots began to appear in his vision. No choice but to chance it. He swam upwards and pushed his head above the surface. Stale, fetid air, but air none the less greeted him as he took a deep, ragged breath.

"What was that?" something hissed. His ears began to burn, not just from the onset of frostbite. He was in a passageway identical to the one he had just left, this one lit by a flickering lantern.

"Go look" a second, guttural growl said. Koll's heart raced, well tried to anyway, it was nearly immobilized by this point. He pulled the knife out and grabbed the side of the hole with the other hand. Something stomped over. A pair of metal boots appeared. Without waiting to see its face, he slashed out clumsily. There was an explosion of blood and it screamed as he severed the leg below the knee. Koll twisted his hand so the knife was pointing straight up, and a heavily tattooed man collapsed onto it. His slit eyes widened as their gaze met, then rolled back into his head as he bled out through a hole in his chest.

"What was that?" a third voice demanded, followed by incoherent babbling between several different voices. Koll dropped the knife and drew his pistol as he heard more footsteps approaching. He fired into the half-naked cultist as it came into view. Its companions began to shout and he swiveled around, firing towards the source of the horrific sounds. A small cylinder bounced out of the darkness with a distinct metal _clank_ and rolled to a stop against his chest. _Grenade_ He plunged into the water and managed to get half a stroke in before it went off, shattering the ground and sending a concussion wave that knocked the air from his lungs in a burst of bubbles and threw him thrashing into the murky depths. The water darkened as his luminator sank from his nerveless fingers. _Ah well, only in death does duty end_. His limbs flailed uncontrollably. Something, probably the bottom of the aqueduct smacked into the back of his head. _You're time isn't over yet_ Fury's voice echoed in his mind. _We still need you, get back to the surface and frack those cultists_. He nodded and struggled to right himself.

_Get up son, you're duty's not finished yet_.

A new voice, _Dad?_

_Colonel Gramman to you, now move_. Koll shoved off the bottom and shot to the surface, water rushing down his throat. He broke through the now two meter wide hole with a gasp and brought up the las pistol. Two heretics, one with a harvester fused to his hand, the other holding an autocannon. Both took multiple shots to the head. He heaved himself out of the water and collapsed in a shivering heap, sidearm pointed down tunnel with a trembling hand. He glanced back and saw the other side of the door, _how damn big is this thing_, and a lever alongside of it. He tried to rise, his leg wouldn't hold his weight, so grunting in exertion he hauled himself over to it and put his weight against it. The grinding of internal gears wrenching the double doors open was the last thing he heard before passing out beneath the surface, weapon still pointed off into the darkness.

"Found Koll" Curze called as he and Vincenns leapt through the doorway. He leapt down and pulled the motionless figure's head above water. "He's not moving" he dropped down beside him and put a hand over his mouth, "he's breathing!"

"Not for long probably" Gerring muttered, Shoeggoth elbowed him again.

Rane stomped over and knelt beside him, doing a quick examination. "Hypothermia and a weak pulse, get his shirt off and that jacket on him, we need to keep his arms and chest warm, vent a las-clip on him." Krane handed him the abandoned jacket and lasgun and the group waited for a minute for Rane to get to work. Koll suddenly coughed up a large amount of water and sat up abruptly. His pistol snapped up for a moment before his vision focused enough to see who was standing over him. "Sergeant, can you heart me?" Rane asked, venting the clip over him. Koll felt a rush of hot air that brought some of the feeling back into his fingers. The squad clustered around him.

"Loud and clear Rane, thanks" with the medic's aid he pulled the jacket over him and buttoned it up, grateful for the warmth. Allis put a hand on his shoulder.

"Welome sarge, can you stand?"

"Not really, legs are numb right now." Shoeggoth put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him up. "Aye, thanks."

"Welcome Koll."

"You okay there Koll?" Krane asked.

"I'll live, I've been through worse." Donnel silently swore he'd pass the story on as he looked back to examine the black depths.

"Enough with the warm and fuzzy feeling, we've got a war to fight" Fury growled. "This water's rising, we need to move."

"Aye, Vincenns gets point, lets move" Koll ordered. He coughed up some more liquid before stumbling forward, Shoeggoth keeping one arm on him. They set off.

Curis whirled through the bloodstained tent, treating soldiers from all regiments. He and the aides had switched to native Kragarian due to the influx of Airen and Cadians. Still, the injuries he was treating from his own regiment were the worse: Daemonic burns and gashes, unhealing ever painful bullet wounds from chaos marines, and guardsmen with their internal organs torn apart by the powers of the warp. He stitched together the stomach of a teenage girl in soldier's clothing and moved on to applying holy water and bactericide soaked bandages to a Lieutenant who had lost half his face to some warp spawn's teeth.

"The casualties are starting to slack off" Glanner reported, sparing a quick glance out the tent flaps before returning to work.

"Either we lost or we've routed them" Curis responded.

"We were winning when I was pulled out" the boy to his right with the bloodstained vest gasped. Curis turned to examine him: stab wound through the back and into his lung, slash marks across his face that would leave deep scars. He began the job of stopping him from bleeding out through his lungs. E caught sight of the dogtags: _Private Gardner_.


	4. The Storm Grows

Tzet-Rhen sat secluded in a tunnel barely high enough to fit his fifteen-foot bulk. The only noise was the steady thud of the digging machines as they bore deeper into this ancient metal ruin they had found shortly after they had summoned him under the guidance of one of his missionaries and pledged themselves to his ruinous work. This ruin was their gift, the reason why he had not simply used them up to wear down the worshippers of the corpse-god, as he so often did with minor worlds. He didn't know what the ruin was, only that it was ancient, older than any of the chaos space marines under his command, even that one dreadnaught who had fought alongside Horus himself. It was an immense fortress, shrouded in symbols not used since before the heresy, and he could tell by the smell of the air that in its ancient depths lay secrets that were worth his entire horde and conquests. For that he was abandoning his previous plan to wipe out a Tyranid hive fleet and an entire sub-sector of humans in one fell blow to concentrate all his forces on Talleris. Everything must be secure. He sent out tendrils of the warp and quickly surveyed his domain through the eyes of his chieftains:

Uexhan, Daemon prince and corrupted Eldar: gathering his horde including two titans and several hundred Daemons for a massive strike against the corpse-god worshipper.

Bellarin the Deceiver: luring the imperial forces into a trap as he drew back his wounded titan and heavy armor into a ring around a massive marsh.

Wy'lin, former librarian of the thousand sons: aiding in the erection of altars to Tzeentch to summon the rest of Tzet's vast horde.

Charloth the Devastator: In a tunnel underground with a large contingent of the horde, searching for someone, _intruders_. Tzet searched his adjutant's memories and saw a small squad of Imperial guard defenseless and scared. No problem. Satisfied there was no external danger, he returned to solving his latest problem: how to find that blasted sorcerer girl he'd detected in the population upon his arrival.

…..

"You know what greatly bothers me?" Werner said into his vox.

"What?" Morrisson's guttural rumble crackled back.

"Those Daemons, when was the last time Daemons worked side-by side with ordinary cultists?" Werner took his attention off the vox for a moment to watch Lieutenant Very's ordering his platoon onto a small projection of rock poking out of their trench line. The thirty-two men dropped onto their bellies and aimed out over the empty plain. A minute ago the cultists had pulled back all along the Fifteenth's front and something massive had been observed amid the remaining fog, offering further support for Wolfe's belief that a major thrust was coming.

"Centuries at least, history isn't my strong point" Morrisson responded. _Nothing's your strong point, outside of how to wield your tanks you know next-to nothing_ Werner thought apprehensively. "Pardon me, we're still getting set up over here" Morrison said, and then closed the frequency. Wolfe climbed out of the dugout he was sharing with Sergeant Raimr and his ten men and surveyed the entire line. He had just over fourteen hundred men and maybe a hundred-fifty tanks left between first battalion and half of fifth stretched over a mile and a half of low ridgeline. The reinforcements the other Kragar regiments would add a few hundred to that number, but not enough.

"Sawyer, what are you doing?" Werner demanded. Twenty paces ahead on the front trench, Private Sawyer looked up from where he had been setting up a captured multilaser.

"Figured we could use the extra firepower" he called back. "I mean, the Chimera wasn't going anywhere fast with its engine blown out." Werner grinned internally at the man's ingenuity but on the outside frowned at his poor tactical judgment in putting a heavy weapon in the center of the front line.

"Mount that on higher ground, that bunker on the left looks like a good place. And where's your squad."

"Dead in the archenemies trenches, I'm the only one left" Sawyer said solemnly, unhooking the heavy weapon from the wooden brace and slinging it over his shoulder. "Figured this would make up."

"I'm sorry. Find a couple of helpers and designate yourselves heavy weapons team" he glanced down at his roster. "Heavy weapons team ten, fifty-sixth platoon, dismissed." Sawyer saluted and trudged past a row of soldiers visibly uneasy to see the comforting mass of the cannon gone. "Fear not, whatever they throw at us we can weather it" Werner said. Some nodded, one haggard dark-skinned and bald sergeant muttered, "the emperor protects."

"Aye he does."

….

In the center-right of the regiment Surring sat in the turret cupola of his command Chimera, surveying the heretic's line with his field binoculars. With the clouds slowly clearing he could just see the archenemy's positions. A column of eight, bog standard Leman Russ tanks led by a single Exterminator rumbled past, pockmarked and scarred by numerous projectile hits. The last tank in the formation had a square of sheet metal hastily welded over a hole in its side. He grimaced and sat back. His battalion had been on the cusp of victory, the spearhead of their advance when the order had come to fall back. Instead of organizing an orderly retreat he had panicked as waves of reinforcements slammed into his men and let his unit be routed. The second battalion had had fourteen hundred men at dawn, now that number was down to less than eight: the highest casualty figure for any battalion. He had failed them, and worse, lost the Commissar in the process. Around him the men were aimlessly wandering about as individual platoon leaders tried to establish a defensive line.

It took Carnigan's shout of "awaiting orders Captain!" to kick-start his brain.

"Very well" he slewed around to face the newly promoted Lieutenant. To Carnigan he looked broken and tired. "Start setting up heavy weapons in the center to cover the hole that teleportation put in our lines, get the men back into the trenches" he spoke. He repeated the words into his vox-bead, to several acknowledgements.

"And the tanks?" Carnigan demanded.

"Two line formation, like Wolfe is doing in the center, get…" he thought for a moment, slowly. "Get the Basilisks to move up a bit, we need spot on heavy support." Carnigan nodded at the distracted man and sprinted off, disconcerted by the encounter.

…

Colonel Avard walked up and down the top of the ridge line that ran across third battalion's positions, barking orders with a positive fire, in his native tongue due to the intermingling between his regiment and the surviving Cadians, who had lost their entire command staff and were waiting for a merger with some newl arrived unit. "Bring that Vanquisher up and sandbag it," he bellowed to the sappers fiddling with the heavy tank ten yards on his left. On his right a full platoon just brought up from the rear was gathered and inexplicably motionless on the backside of the ridge. "Lieutenant Strauss, you are needed to back up sixtieth platoon on the right, find heavy weapons teams six and eight and get moving!"

"Yes sir" the lead sapper and Strauss said simultaneously. Satisfied as they sprang into action, Avard marched on. He passed a bunker loaded to the gills with melta launchers. _Fat lot they will do against baneblades_. Only the Basilisks had a chance of killing those monsters. He twisted to examine a platoon setting up shop directly below in a fire support trench and felt a tinge of pain as the bullet wound in his side flared up. He patted it and resolved to have Curis patch it up better once this mess was through. He stepped around a pair of demolishers being dug in. The troopers doing the digging looked up and recognized his massive form with a collection of whispers and gazes of awe from their mud stained faces. He nodded to them and they saluted before resuming their work with redoubled ferocity.

"Avard" Wolfe's unmistakable voice crackled over his vox-bead.

"Aye Wolfe?" He stopped and the wound flared up again, this time accompanied by a faint trickle of blood. He shrugged it off.

"I've got movement on the Auspex, something big, get ready" Wolfe seemed tense. Avard would have expected more satisfaction from a man who's potentially battle altering hunch had just been proven true. He glanced around and saw that for the most part his men had fallen still in their positions, dug in and waiting

"We're just finishing setting up now, what of the others?" he responded with a grim satisfaction. _Ready to be murdered_.

"Werner's set and waiting, but Surring's still scrambling, since you've got the strongest battalion I may need to divert your reinforcements if he breaks" Wolfe warned.

"Acknowledged, out." Avard shut the frequency then turned to stare out over his men. Wolfe was a desk jockey with some exceedingly good command skills and unrealistically good luck. Werner was an able commander with a knack for keeping his men together in the face of certain horrific death. Surring, Surring was the junior officer, even less experienced than Wolfe's five years service. He still had yet to learn to lead. If anyone were folding, he would be the one to collapse. Avard's confidence was somewhat restored when the artillery began to bomb the archenemy again. There was a faint rumbling overhead as a flight of Marauder bombers soared overhead. He watched them vanish into the receding clouds. Ten minutes later, the maximum duration for these sorts of short bombing runs, he would notice they had not returned.

….

_This is what I get for not staying behind a desk_ Wolfe silently lamented as he, Amin, and Viado examined the glass screen of the auspex. He'd been one of those wannabe intern kids; a simple junior paperwork officer running errands for the actual generals in the hopes of one day sucking up enough to get a minor command position. He'd been the annoying know-it-all type, always showing up everyone else when it came to warfare, always making his fellow officers wish they could punch his face in. Some Kragarian lord general; a mountain of a man with a pretention for bold risks and a tongue gifted for inspiring speeches had seen some promise in him and let him come along for a crusade, and after a particularly nasty battle where three regiments had been encircled for the better part of two days and given him command of a regiment. Here he was, with what appeared to be a Titan facing him down. There was nothing else that could make that big of a shadow on the auspex.

"So, the emperor protects?" Amin asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"It don't think he's that good, pardon the heresy" Wolfe answered. He heard whispers spreading up and down the trenches as each platoon got the bad news with its Auspex man's first scan of the enemy's lines. Wolfe examined the screen again. One possible Reaver class titan and half a dozen Baneblades filled it, blotting out the undoubtedly present hordes of heretic cannon fodder and light tanks: the AT80's and basic PDF Leman Russ variants. Then Viado adjusted the dials a bit and muttered a prayer to the machine god, and two Baneblades came together into a Warhound titan.

"Wolfe" he droned.

"I see it. What do you think of it?"

"Corrupted, the poor machine spirit is sufferinge." Wolfe detected the faintest hint of a sigh from that cybernetically overrun brain. H shook his head.

"I mean how to kill it, put the machine spirits out of their misery."

"Oh." Viado's false eye brightened and processors whirred. "The Warhound is pretty standard, pour fire into it until it dies. It's fast however, so it should be the primary artillery, air, and Vanquisher target first so as to keep it from trampling our lines. The Reaver however has its primary reactor in the rear. I recommend that you have the Valkyries swing around it and strike it from behind."

"Assuming they survive the flak they've been taking?"

"I'm positive at least a few will. I have a couple of junior adepts working on my plans for an EMP to fry those turrets, but between the lack of existing Imperium technology to base it off of, and interference from those conservative fool priests over said lack of existing technology, it will be quite some time before we can call down the fury of the Void Dragon to snuff out their corrupted machine spirits. On the other hand…" Wolfe tapped him on the shoulder, cutting off the potential monologue at its knees.

"Focus, we'll have to make do with what we have."

"Then I have already given you my advice. Aim everything you've got at those titans." In the distance, a single gun rang out; a roar so brutal it tore at the very soul of anyone who heard it. A glowing blue shell shot high into the sky, vanishing briefly among the clouds before dropping. A daemonic scream echoed as it dropped earthward, hitting a hundred to Wolfe's right and engulfing the trenches I a blinding blue flare and a terrible explosion of released warp energy. A hundred tortured screams ripped the air as Wolfe cringed and looked away. He waited till silence returned before looking back. A perfect circle fifty yards in diameter was simply gone, vaporized by the power of the blast.

"I need a spotter Valkyrie airborne and a full rocket strike ready to fry whatever shot that thing," Wolfe ordered. Amin began talking furiously into the vox. He heard several more screams, and a bluish haze began to drift over the lines. Wolfe saw his boys hesitate, nervous. He watched brave men cower in their trenches and weak men turn to run. This latest weapon was more than just a murder tool. He watched units begin to disintegrate. _At least Fury could have kept them in line with fear_. He pulled out his vox-bead and switched to the override frequency, which broadcast him into every trooper's headset automatically. "Hold the line, soldiers. Only in death does your duty end, and you are still breathing and ready to oppose the archenemy." He sighed.

"Not too bad really," Amin tried to comfort him. He heard a chorus of affirmatives and occasional snide remarks in response. Another shell landed two hundred yards to his right, removing several tanks and sixteenth and half of fiftieth platoon from existence. Some squads began to outright all back up the trenches.

"We are the Imperial Guard, and we shall hold the line." Wolfe muttered a small prayer to the god emperor. There was a roar in the distance, followed by a volley of glowing blue plasma fire that crackled overhead and gouged into the artillery positions. Wolfe felt the parapet under him shake slightly from the impact. Another devastating salvo followed a minute later. Against this the return fire of the artillery seemed like peashooters. _How long until they come for us?_

….

"Hold up" Koll called from where he leaned of Shoeggoth's shoulder. The little group came to a halt. "Hear that?" He pointed skywards. Allis listened: she picked it up before most of the others: a faint, steady rumbling and the screech of metal gears. "Tanks, we must be under their main column."

"Sounds like they've got something worth stealing," Vinncens announced. Curze shook his head and began muttering about suicide.

"Exactly my idea" Koll responded. "Find us a portal out." They had to go another twenty yards before finding one. This one was set to one side and accessible by a series of rough handholds carved into the stone wall. Vinncens scrabbled up the slippery ladder, and pressing his choulders against the unforgiving metal forced it up against the weight of what was probably several inches of mud. A cascade of brown water pouring through nearly knocked him clear for his efforts. He waited until it subsided, then poked his head through. A set of scarred treads rumbled past his view, then a second. He poked his head up, shoving the hatch to the side. They had ended up on a desolate, fog-obscured highway in the center of an armored column. A Chimera buttoned up against the cold and inscribed with the symbols of the ruinous powers trundled past his right, then another. An impressive Predator bearing Thousand Son's markings advanced on his left, elevated gun barrel painted to resemble a Tzeentch flamer. He could see the impressions of other vehicles in the fog, too far to see. "Armor column, lots of tanks" he called down. "Fog is heavy enough and they're all buttoned up, we might be able to board one."

"Good, advance and find us some treads" Koll responded. Vinncens clambered out and lay prone in the mud, praying he wasn't in some vehicle's path. Krane and Allis came up next, shivering as a wind began to blow and in the distance something howled. Then Shoeggoth jumped out, helping Koll who was bleeding strength through various wounds. Rane and Donnel followed next with Fury, Gerring, and a very unwilling Curze bringing up the rear. They crouched low, so mud-stained as to be invisible in case anyone was paying close attention to the road.

_That could also work against us_ Allis realized as a Centaur came close enough to spray mud in her face. There was a brief clearing in the vehicles, and then something massive loomed out of the fog. They all heard the deep rumbling of its engines, the creaking of the massive, millennia old hulk.

"Is that thing real?" Curze spat.

"If it is, we're taking it" Koll responded. Adorned with flapping penants and numerous icons, the Shadowsword fully materialized: a four hundred ton metal box belhing metal smoke from recesses in its ad-hoc metal armor plating. Its massive volcano cannon had been painted in a long, spiraling dragon breathing fire and a rather imposing quartet of melta launchers had somehow been bolted onto the sloping forward plating right where the driver's hatch should have been.

"Now that's my kind of ride," Vinncens said, managing a grin through chattering teeth.

"Assuming it doesn't eat our souls first" Koll dutifully noted. "You, Fury, and Allis take the turret hatch, Krane and Gerring grab the rear. Everyone else just hang on until they've cleared this monster," he ordered. The shadowsword churned towards them, throwing up a small wave of mud before it.

"And if we get killed taking it?" Curze asked, crouched on his immediate left.

"Shadowswords tend to have a crew of five at most, all that space in there is the laser batteries and targeters. To be sure though, you go with Krane." Curze nodded slightly.

_My big mouth_ he thought, pulling his waterlogged jacket a little tighter around him. All it did was drop the temperature in his chest by another ten degrees. He watched the tank approach, blocking out everything else as it loomed over him. Mud splashed over him. He saw the eye-scorching symbols close enough to make out the crude brushstrokes. Then he heard Koll yelling above its engine to grab on, and leapt to his feet, grabbing a protruding equipment hook long bent out of shape. For a moment it seemed he had it, but then the tank's momentum plucked him off his feet and he slipped free, splashing down onto a couple of submerged rocks. For a moment he lay there, oblivious in the freezing water, letting the tank's bow waves wash over him. Then panic warmed his numb brain cells enough to send him screaming out of the water. A tread whizzed by his face; the tank was already gone. He spun around and sloshed after it.

Koll thought he was the last one onboard, scrabbling hand over hand up the surprisingly warm hull until it leveled off enough for him to lay still. Then he saw Curze running after them. "Private get your rear onto this tank right now!" Fury bellowed.

"Put some backbone into it man!" Gerring yelled. The tank was too loud for any surrounding vehicles to pick them up. They were only moving at around eight miles an hour, but fatigue and the mud sucking at his shins slowed Curze to a crawl.

"Someone got a rope?" Koll asked.

"Here!" Allis pulled the fifty-foot nylon court from a small bag in her equipment webbing. She threw it.

Curze spotted the thin black strand sailing through the air; a lifeline. He dove after it as it fell at his feet and manage to find the end. Allis and Gerring pulled him up to the radiator fins, which he grabbed onto and clambered to safety. He lay there, gasping for breath. A tap from Krane jolted him up a few seconds later. "We're moving, don't fall behind" he whispered. At his shoulder Gerring was sliding Koll's knife through the rear hatch. On top Fury was straddling the main gun itself, stabbing away in a shower of sparks with his chainsword. "Aye, coming" he panted. "Thanks for the rope." Krane nodded. Gerring kicked the hatch free and leapt in. Krane drew his sword.

Koll watched them go in and clambered up to the turret hatch, using the lasr as a boost. He heard a few brief gunshots, then the tank slewed to a halt with enough force to throw Rane over the front and smack Donnel into the missile tubes. . The other vehicles began passing them. They were dirty enough to avoid immediate notice, but sooner or later some would wonder why their super-heavy tank wasn't moving. "Start it up damnit" he hissed in as Shoeggoth pitched the rope to Rane and effortlessly pulled him up.

There was a pause, frantic whispers as Koll's heartbeat began to rise. Then with a cough the engines rumbled to life and they started forward. A quick glance around confirmed no one had noticed. "All clear down there?" he asked.

Allis's head poked through the hatchway. "All clear, six hostiles dead" she reported.

"Good, everyone in." Koll helped Donnel and Rane over, then struggled up the side, his trembling legs threatening to give out under him. Shoeggoth put an arm over his shoulder and lowered him in. "Thanks." He followed Allis to the cockpit as Shoeggoth sealed the hatch behind them. On the outside their new vehicle had been an abomination: a metal blocky wart upon the destroyed landscape. Inside however, something was different. The air was warmer from the steady combustion, and the engines didn't roar: they just moaned, as if in pain. The interior was a claustrophobic turret station; a steep hatchway in, and a pair of low-ceiling cabins that the squad was clustered in. Gerring and Curze were exchanging harch whispers, Donnel and Rane were seated between the instrumentation, Vinncens rove with a look of boyish pleasure on his face and his shotgun on his lap, and Fury sat behind him, bolt pistol at the ready in case of corruption. Krane muttered a curse from in back and the engines yelped, but kept going.

"Do you feel that?" he asked.

"What?"

"The tank, its in pain, the corruption is hurting it." Fury stared at him with suspicion. "You can't feel it?"

"I can" Koll said. He saw Allis nod. "Maybe the machine spirit is still loyal to the mechanicus." It was a hopeful thought. "Now, where are we Vin?"

Vinncens squinted at a chart nailed to the dashboard by sharpened finger bones. "Hard to say because reading it would qualify me for a summary execution, but judging by the terrain coming up on the auspex, I'd say we're a couple miles east of our lines, heading right towards them. ETA forty minutes to an hour."

"Good, I don't like this hiding business" Fury noted.

"And I suppose you'd take a tank with your sword."

Fury glared. "You think I can't?" No response came forth. Koll glanced around his men after a minute. Conversation had dropped off into the quiet chattering of teeth and the steady _dip-drip_ of water of their sodden bodies. Donnel had curled into a ragged ball under a control panel with Rane on his knees beside him, face frozen. Allis's flaming hair was now indistinguishable from the rest of her save the odd movement it made as she shook. Curze and Gerring were slumped, dazed and Vinncens was staring out the narrow viewport with glazwd over eyes. Only Krane made the occasional movement as he fiddle with the engine panel, while Shoeggoth and Fury seemed unaffected. He himself was shivering, blood mixing with water.

"Who's still got a dry pack?" he asked. There was barely any movement as the group limply inspected their bags, which had been made with waterproof lining. Only Krane's pack was unusable, fortunately. "Good, vacate the rear compartment and we change into the dry gear one at a time. Allis first." He watched her go. Briefly, his mind celebrated at the thought of some nice dry socks on his waterlogged feet. He stayed it. _No relief yet, not until this planet is burned_.

On the chaos line, Uexhan, corrupted Eldar daemon prince lifted his head and sniffed the air. His two mouths smiled and he raised one of his six clawed hands into the air. The great warp-cannon ceased to fire and his titan's plasma cannons went silent. Up and down the front Daemon, newly armed heretic, and space marine alike turned towards the ruined Eldar. Once he had been handsome: a beauty by even his own forsaken race's standards. That had been long ago, before they turned their back on him and he offered his service to Tzet-Rhen. Now he boasted six arms, each with a different appendage, a mottled black skin, and long, bony wings sprouting from his back. His people had had agility, but lacked offensive capabilities. Tzeentch had given him those up his rise to Prince status, making him Tzet's greatest assault general. He turned to his armies.

"It is time, prepare for a feast of souls" he called. A horrific cheer went up. He sniffed the air again. Something new that he had yet to sense was afoot... he sniffed again, _determination? Good. _ "Not the same weak souls those silly half-sized corpse-god worshippers had, but nice, tasty Imperial guard ones." The cheer got louder. "Now advance!" The Reaver titan went first, a single resounding _Thump_ that shook the ground as its gears whirred and legs creaked forward. With a cheer, his army swarmed forward around it.


	5. Hold the Line

Chapter 5: Hold the Line

In its second hour, the bombardment gradually faded, a sign of the battle coming.

Lieutenant Carnigan sat in the slowly drying mud of his trench, inspecting the platoon's three hours' work. Two heavy bolters sat twenty yards back, trained over the hastily reinforced parapet wall. A pair of mortars had taken up residence in Koll's squad's bunker, emperor bless the late sergeant. "Well, I really don't want to lie," Carnigan began. Corporal Tantin, Private Ellirn, and several others out of eyesight burst out laughing, breaking the tension. "Shoot straight and don't bolt, we'll make it through this" Carnigan said, taking a seat in a helpful 'v' formed by two shattered wooden boards.

"How bad is it?" Tantin asked. He risked a glance across no man's land, where an unnatural fog obscured the enemy's preparations.

Carnigan recalled Wolfe's warning about the titans. "Oh, you have no idea."

….

Private Sawyer was startled as the tripod abruptly collapsed and his multilaser dropped off the parapet. He cursed and picked it up. One of the two men he'd found wandering the back trenches, Private Mortigane, examined the tripod. "Mud jamming the bolt" he said, spitting and rubbing with his coat. He snapped it into place and they remounted the four barreled weapon. They were twenty yards back and aiming two hundred fifty ahead. Sawyer swiveled the multilaser in a thirty degree arc. "Everything within here dies" he said. Mortigane nodded.

"Unless they have tanks of course" Private Nerrin said, returning from the last supply drop with a pair of hefty power cells, which he dropped on the table beside them. Sawyer grimaced.

"That's what the rocket men are for" he gestured at a squad armed with the heavy single-shot launchers the Kragar were forced to use because their limited industries couldn't produce melta missiles, among other things.

"True" Nerring drew his lasgun and dropped beside them.

…

Wolfe watched as a pair of soldiers mounted the Kragarian battle-flag on an improvised pole over his bunker at the high point of the ridgeline. It unfurled and flapped in the cold wind: the silver tome and lasgun over a navy background with red stars to represent each planet in the KRagar system. On a white strip at the bottom was inscribed their motto; "know thine enemy." _As long as that flag holds, we haven't lost yet_ Wolfe thought. He surveyed the army spread out before him and his small staff. They were shaken and cold and soaked, but still strong.

…

"Everyone holding up well?" Koll asked. He got nods all around, and then went in to change himself. The tank jolted abruptly. "What was that?"

"Marauder wreckage, don't worry we're still a couple miles from the battlefield" Vinncens said.

"I will stop worrying when we start shooting" Koll responded. He quickly pulled on the fresh uniform from his bag, relishing its relative dryness. As he shoved the soaking and ripped one in, something dropped out with a loud clink. He picked it up: the regimental badge, chiding himself, he pinned it on and returned to the packed cabin.

"You know this tank needs?" Vinncens said.

"What?"

"A radio box, so we can play music while frying heretics. Think about it." Allis slapped her open palm to her forehead.

"Actually, that's a good idea, what music do you have in mind?" Koll replied. Fury began muttering about noise marines.

"Well, our anthem would sound good with something blowing up in the background, then there's that one song air command likes to drop napalm to, the pre-heresy one." He thought for a minute.

"Something with a V," Curze said. Koll nodded, thinking about it. They heard a drumroll of concussions, and several hydra batteries began chattering.

"If we survive this, I suppose Viado could rig something up" Koll said. The tank column entered the trench lines. "Alright, here's how we'll do it. Curze, you're the best shot, take the main gun, Allis go with him. Can Donnel shoot?" Donnel stood up lopsidedly and nodded. "Good, take the pintel bolter. Gerring, get the missile launchers, and Krane, you're on engine detail, Shoeggoth make sure nobody boards us from the rear." The group broke up. Krane began fiddling with the knobs and the engine's volume increased.

"Just like my dad's cargo lifter" he muttered.

Gerring hopped into the tiny missile nacelle and examined the controls in the dim half-light. There was a joystick to aim, and a pair of digital sights inscribed with one of the cursed languages. He put them away, no need where they were going-and pressed buttons until he found the launcher and the activation switch. The missile pod hummed to life. "This is so going to be the first thing they shoot" he muttered, ever cheerful.

Curze clambered into the turret where the breach of the volcano cannon hummed faintly and examined the controls while Allis joined him. "I can't read these" he said.

"Have you ever been in a tank before?" Allis asked. He gave her a thumbs-up, the space too cramped to nod. "Then wouldn't the controls be relatively the same?"

This is a laser tank, you want me to overload the generator and boil us?" He examined the controls. "This is the power lever, I think" he tested a lever next to a glowing readout. Allis grabbed his hand.

"Power lever would be on the right, only Teriphus and Kragar pattern tanks have everything on the left" she said. He nodded and grabbed the lever on the other side, cautiously pushing it down. The main gun's lights faded and its faint humming died. He pushed it two-thirds of the way up, causing the weapon to glow red. The trigger lever was on his right, with a heretic's hand still fused to it. He cut it off and threw it down the hatch. "We're good then."

Donnel climbed into the exposed bolter mount, careful to keep his head below the edge of the tank. He tried to shrug off that feeling of uselessness and vulnerability he'd had for the past hours, to little success. His good arm settled on the trigger, his bad awkwardly held the gun barrel.

They came to a halt with the convoy. Koll watched as legions of heretics formed up into loose brigades around the slow, sure glowing blue rubric marins and bloodstained berserkers. The cultists were different: clad in uniform with better weaponry and armor, while they moved with a coordinated fluidity, forming up into squads and platoons. The ground shook, and a pair of colossal legs stomped past his field of view. Vinncens gaze up through the sensor readouts. "Oh Frack, they have a titan." A second, larger pair of legs blocked out the entire screen.

"Two, we'll hit those first." Koll noted, trying to remain unfazed. The army began to move off. Suddenly, an ungodly blue monstrosity with pointed ears and six arms stepped in front of them, the water vaporizing wherever it stepped. It opened its mouth and out poured a grating howl that swelled eardrums to bursting point. He grabbed his ears and winced.

"I think he wants us to advance" Fury shouted over it. Vinncens pushed down on the accelerator, and the shadowsword glided forward, picking up speed as it moved over the ridge that they had been dying for just a few hours ago. Cannonfire became audible. "Frack, they've already started" Fury noted.

….

Wolfe stood at the bunker parapet, watching the mass of heresy forming up six hundred yards distant through field binoculars. "Prepare" he whispered over the vox. Normally his aide would be there to bellow them out, more for tradition and morale than anything else. "PREPARE FOR BATTLE!" he ordered in a hoarse shout. Lasguns came up and tank hatches shut. Infantry finished shoring u the gaps made by the warp bombardment. A shout rose up from the opposing line, and the solid mass of the archenemy's forces advanced. Calls of "steady men," and "give them hell" echoed up and down the line. "Are the Valkyrie's ready?" Wolfe asked.

"They're orbiting the battlefield" Amin assured him. Wolfe watched the mass of converted Imperial citizenry and tanks charging towards him without batting an eye.

_The first wave is always the weak and the numerous, a punching bag for us to waste our munitions on_. "Call in the airstrikes, flatten them."

The Valkyrie's appeared in the sky: a thin black line against the white clouds. Wolfe watched them dive on the advancing tide of blue and red. Several hydra batteries opened up, and he saw small bursts of flame and several began to free fall. Morrison did his best to target the guns, pumping shells from his commandeered vanquisher _Anvil_. He personally disintegrated two into clouds of shrapnel that cut the nearest troops apart, a standard Russ, _Fury of the Emperor_ hit a third. The demolishers _Wolverine_ and _Fighting Johm_ scored, silencing the remaining AA fire. The Valkyries dropped in and leveled off, unleashing a deluge of missiles. The archenemy's charge broke. Tanks fractured, infantry disintegrated and melted. The Rubric Marine at the head of the charge blocked half a dozen missiles with glowing warp portals only for a Valkyrie, in its death throes with both engines ablaze to plow into it, fusing both together in molten wreckage. A cheer went up from the Fifteenth. As the next charge met a similar fate, the cheering only grew louder. Then the Baneblades appeared through the smoke and steam. Werner saw the single metal behemoth before him and began issuing orders to bring the tanks around. Surring almost panicked as one came into view directly in front of him. Avard began calling for airstrikes as he spotted one at the center of the charging archenemy formation. Wolfe began planning as two rumbled towards him. Regular tanks fanned out around them, then the ordinary footsoldiers. A dozen Corrupted Marines and Daemons of both Khorne and Tzeentch spearheaded the assault. It was a frightening force that stretched to the horizon and was just 500 meters distant, against which his beloved regiment seemed a thin blue and red line in comparison. The lead baneblade took the first shot. A bunker vanished in a cloud of rubble and blood from the two squads inside ejected skywards. Wolfe didn't give an inch at the imposing force. "Artillery engage" he ordered.

The first salvo screamed in. For a moment great gaps in the archenemy's advance opened as his infantry and armor died by the dozen, splattered across the sodden ground and into the air by earthshaker rounds and ordinary artillery. Wolfe spotted the airborne torso of a bloodletter crash down upon half a dozen cultists wearing re-dyed civilian garb. Then the next wave moved up and those holes vanished. At 400 meters Morrison ordered his vehicles to pick the largest enemies first, assigning individual vanquisher and annihalator squads to take on the booming baneblades. Leman Russ's began to duel their corrupted brethren as exterminators and demolishers fired at will into the approaching mass of infantry. The trenches lit up with impacts of gargantuan size. His first shot struck the closest tank halfway up its sloping forward armor, removing a demolisher cannon sponson. The two vanquishers maneuvering with his; _Unbreakable_, and _Steel Hammer_ put shells through its left tread mount and flank to little affect. The Baneblade's return shot slammed between them and removed _Steel hammer_ and an unlucky Chimera from existence, rocking the surviving vehicles with enough force to slam Morrisson's head into the back of the cramped turret cupola. He wiped away the tears welling up in his eyes and sighted almost directly down its main gun barrel.

"Get the Marauders in the air, slow orbit. I want the second Valkyrie flight to engage immediately and reload first flight with inferno missiles" Three hundred meters. Needle las rifles and sniper cannons opened fire next, singling out officers and tank commanders for penitence. At Two hundred fifty heavy weapons on both sides opened up, crisscrossing the closing gap with bolter fire and rockets. Sawyer squeezed the trigger of the multilaser and watched a near solid line of lasbolts chew into the infantry.

"Khornate Berserker on the right, fifty yards" Private Nerrin warned him. He shifted his aim and watched the marine slowly grind to a halt and collapse.

Morrison's third shot found the Baneblade's treads, ripping the mounting apart and stopping the tank dead in its tracks. However, at the same time _Unbreakable_'s engine block was ripped open by the concussion of a near miss, sending it to a stop with smoke pouring from the rear. The man on the heavy stubber kept shooting. Morrison's fourth shot removed the gunner from existence and a pair of lucky basilisk shells took the entire turret, reducing the Baneblade to a slowly burning hulk that served only to break up the formation of the oncoming infantry. He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction, then ordered his drive to head north and engage the next tank, which had carved out a large chunk of the lines despite annihalator laserfire slowly chewing it a part.

At one-hundred fifty meters the infantry opened fire with a high pitched whine of lasrifles mixed in with their battle-cries. The advance slowed as each yard now was gained over a dozen bodies. "I want a thousand dead by the time they're running!" Carnigan exhorted his men on as he emptied his grenade launched into a beast of Khorne outrunning the rest of its army. It took three bombs and the rifles of Corporal Daggin's five men to bring it to its knees and prolonged lasfire to finish it. By that time the rest of the army had overrun the corpse. The heretics were being cut down by the thousands, but it just wasn't enough. They closed to a hundred yards. "Get ready to fall back to the second line, we can't afford a melee!"

Surring's line had nearly collapsed, shelled by tanks and wavering under the impending hammerblow when the first Marauders roared in overhead, heedless of renewed cannon fire rising up to meet them.

Carnigan heard their engines overhead and paused from ordering the platoon to withdraw through a trench dug by the baneblade's gun and glanced up in time to see the first rockets stave in the formation. The Baneblade bearing down on them absorbed five missiles, two bombs, and four artillery shells before detonating in a hundred meter high fireball. Burning wreckage and oil rained down, wreaking havoc. "Hold, the tide is about to break!" he ordered, then took his own advice and resumed firing. Surring meanwhile sighed with relief.

A vox call went up on all frequencies, and two battalions of armor and almost a thousand men arrived from the various Kragar regiments. Leading them was reserve Captain Karrin Earyn, destined for the nineteenth but reassigned. The new troops filled out the trenches a bit, giving Wolfe a bit of confidence.

Uexhall, corrupted Eldar watched his assault crumble under aerial attacks. In a few places they breached the trenches, only to get thrown back by a wave of men swamping over them. He sighed, and telepathically ordered the survivors to withdraw. Two Baneblades and maybe a third of the original force returned. Both tanks were crippled by defiant cannonfire and Uexhall's anger grew as he spotted his beloved changelings and imps dragging themselves weakly back, cut apart by lasfire and explosives. "Prepare the third wave" he ordered. The two titans reared up. Twelve Baneblades gathered around them along with untold numbers of Daemons and armor, of which many were possessed by daemonic spirits. Khornate marine ground their chainaxes together and roared while the infantry-battle hardenened troops and not the local soft heretics-struck up a war chant. Uexhall considered leading them personally, but remembered the number of armies whose commanders had turned tail and fled after their leader was cut down by a well-placed las round to the head. Vanquisher round more likely, the Kragars had a reputation as tank snipers. He watched the titan move off, wading through the hail of fire the corpse-god worshippers put up. Now where was that shadowsword? It wasn't necessary, but its range would ensure that there wouldn't be any survivors. He spotted the tank trundling along amid the latest armored column to come from his warp portal. Good, he shouted at it to adva

Wolfe spotted the titans moving on the auspex before they left the fog cloaking the archenemy's lines, and ordered everything they had left to engage. Artillery flattened tanks and infantry, but deflected harmlessly off their void shields. The Very ground beneath them shook. Sawyer's extra power cells were knocked off the parapet and men slipped and fell.

"Vanquishers and annihilators, target the titans, everything else cover them" Morrison ordered. He opened fire. _Unbreakable_, jury-rigged by one of Viado's servitors, joined in along with maybe a dozen other tanks, the rest drawn off by the Baneblades hammering down upon their flanks. With a full complement of vehicles they could do it, but simply too many had been lost, even with the reinforcements. Nonetheless they stood and die like proper guardsmen.

Strauss took the impact of the Warhound titan's first salvo as he exhorted his men on from the roof of the trench, the shockwave as the ten foot artillery shell detonated slamming him back into the next parapet. By the time the stars retreated from around his throbbing head his men were beginning to bolt. "Hold the line" he called pulling himself to his feet. One soldier tried to scramble up over the trench wall, but he grabbed the man by the seat of his pants and threw him back into the mud. A second further down was cut in half by a bolter round. "We have been ordered to hold, now start shooting" he ordered. Sixty-eight men opened up around him. The two heavy weaponry teams swung their fifty caliber weapons around and mowed down the nearest line of heretics. Half a dozen men vanished in a blue fireball cast by a rubric marine, and two more were ignited, screaming by a flamer teleporting on top of them. Strauss brought his weapon up and put twenty rounds into the beast, detonating its methane tanks into a fireball that leapt overhead. "Riddle that rubric marine private Treyflin" he ordered. A line of tracers settled on the marine as it cast fireballs and enchanted bolter rounds at them, the gunner squeezing the trigger with white-knuckled hands. The behemoth kept going, the bullets vanishing before it in a series of red flares. A rocket; fired from fiftieth platoon fifty yards down soared its defenses and ripped an arm off in a shower of blue gore. The cannon rounds began to hit home.

An exterminator tank rumbled forward, maneuvering its numerous bolter and rocket sponsons to rip apart the entire front. The warhound stopped, aimed, and fired. The glowing blue plasma beam connected with the tank, vaporizing it in a flash of light. Several squads were incinerated. Two heretical PDF tanks rumbled up to exploit the gap. Strauss' rocket gunner hit the first. "Good job Catin" he called, patting the man on one shoulder. The second took two rounds from a Leman Russ and slewed to a halt a hundred yards short. The line wavered, but managed to hold firm.

That is, until the Titans stomped through their lines, crushing whole platoons underfoot and raking up and down the trenches. Strauss pulled his men back as the warhound approached, abandoning the front line of trenches. "Head for the second line, the artillery will cover for you" Avard barked over the crushing rumble of the titan. They ran. Strauss made sure the soldiers got away. He turned to Treyflin, now on his third marine. "Last ones here, let's go."

Treyflin shook his head and loaded another belt. "I'm not letting them get through" he responded. A pair of cultists, wading through the mud under his line of fire leapt up. Strauss gunned them down, blowing their bodies off the parapet. Without anyone else save the dying with them, every autocannon seemed to be pointing their way. Strauss knew there was no point arguing with a Kragar determined to sacrifice himself.

"It's been an honor private." He turned to clamber up the crude board ladder to the communications trench.

The Warhound crashed through the lines a hundred yards to their left, flailing glowing beams of plasma through the retreating troops. Strauss glanced up. "Oh Fu-" The Warhound's left arm shot out and fired. Strauss and Treyflin were literally vaporized by the volcano cannon's laser beam as it gouged a hundred-yard gap through the barbed wire, enabling the heretics to spill in and swarm up the sides.

In the face of the Reaver Titan advancing directly at him, Wolfe ordered the regiment to pull back. There was one more line of defenses crewed by a couple hundred reserves, the artillery, and the medical tents. After that there was simply nothing between them and the heart of the beachhead. Another flight of Valkyries swooped in to cover them. Flack guns mounted on the Reaver's shoulders opened up, swatting the craft out of the skies in trails of black smoke and flame.

To his credit, and that of the troops under his command, they did not completely break even as the titan stomped down and began to fire and the swarm of heretics broke through.

…

Curis stood amid the packed field hospital surveying his work. "The regiment is falling back, prepare to run!" a voice shouted over the public vox a tech-adept had set up outside. His blood ran like ice.

"You heard them" he called angrily to his orderlies, "Get as many as as you can onto the supply trucks, we shall not let death have them just yet."

…..

Uexhall, corrupted Eldar and Daemon prince allowed himself a chuckle as his beloved titans advanced. Oh how glorious the day would be, Tzet, and maybe even Tzeentch itself would reward him for this; maybe even some of those nice Imperial souls could be tempted to chaos before they were wiped out. Whoever was in command of the defenses certainly was worthy of a rank in his army. "My children advance, the day is ours!" he called. Around him, daemon and cultist alike broke into a twisted song of victory.

…..

"Here that?" Curze said as the twisted cacophony filtered in through the tank's three yards of armor plating. Allis strained to listen, and then nodded. "They're singing, they think they've already won." He manipulated the scope until it settled squarely on the rampaging warhound's back.

"Curze, fire on my command" Koll ordered.

"Lets see how they sing when we're done with them" Curze replied. He took aim,. The titan's void shields were visibly flickering as the Earthshakers hammered it. Even if they somehow took it out, the Reaver would get among them and end the battle right there. "I have a clear shot" he called.

"Good." Koll took a deep breath. "In the service of the emperor" he and Fury said.

"For the Emperor" Allis, Donnel, Krane, Vinncens, Curze, Rane, and Shoeggoth replied.

"Fire." Curze rammed the firing mechanism. For an instant, the world outside the turret vanished as an apocalyptic blast, like none seen by him before fired from the turret with a scream that ripped the faithful from the tainted, taking the form of a red beam of the Emperor's Fury that linked the two war machines in its incendiary destruction. The Warhound's shields simply died under the righteous onslaught, its armor was rent asunder into glowing chunks, its power core fractured and melted, its lights dying. Every eye, cursed or loyal, turned to the scene. The Warhound froze and seemed to sag a little as though at peace, finally, its chest a glowing mass of molten metal running in rivulets down its body, scorching off the warp growth wherever it touched. Then it collapsed forward in a catastrophic plunge, smashing several hundred heretics underneath its thousand-ton carcass. For a moment there was stillness as both sides tried to figure out what had just happened. As reality gradually drifted back to him, Curze noticed the singing had stopped. "Fire everything, full speed ahead" Koll ordered. Gerring's fusillade of rocket powered annihilation cut them a wide path through the horde, Donnel and Shoeggoth slaughtered those on their flanks. As the tank accelerated, two heretics armed with bolter pistols and knives leapt over Shoeggoth's line of fire and into the vehicle. They emerged in a spray of blood and a shower of body parts arcing high into the air a moment later. The first tank round slammed into them, the standard 116 millimeter AT-80 shell unable to penetrate but knocking everyone inside for a loop. The second took a few inches of armor off the tread covers. A Baneblade traversed its main gun around and fired, the shell blasting out a twenty-foot wide crater just feet from them.

"Forty seconds to firing charge" Curze reported.

Wolfe watched the Behemoth tank trundling towards them, fired upon by everything the heretics had. "All support units, cover that Shadowsword, it's on our side" he ordered. A volley of napalm rockets cleared the scrabbling infantry off one side. Two basilisk shells hammered out an iron bottomed crater from the hulls of tanks. One baneblade was pelted with missiles until it ignited; the other had to fend off the furious assault of a Morrison and everything he had left. There was nothing they could do about the Reaver however. As its shoulder turrets and missile launchers continued to pound the retreating regiment, it swiveled around and took aim.

The first shot from its artillery cannon removed armor and hull alike, exposing one of the heaving treads to open air and cutting off from the rest of the tank. The plasma cannon on the other arm came up. "We need that laser right now" Fury called as the tank's engine coughed but kept going.

Curze nodded. "Overcharge please Krane. "You see that dial next to you? Turn it halfway down" he instructed. Allis nodded and did so. He grabbed the power lever and cranked it all the way up, at the same, time Krane shunted several million volts from the reactor to the main gun. "Ready!" The plasma cannon was settling into position as he dropped the crosshairs on it and measured the range to five-hundred meters.

"Fire!" Fury bawled. Their shot came an instant earlier. The beam of light connected with the Reaver's left shoulder. Its shields died and a good chunk of its body vanished, blown off or outright melted. Power core intact, its other arm fired. Curze had an instant to push a startled Allis halfway down the hatch before a titanic beam of glowing plasma removed most of the turret and chassis, turning their vehicle into a smoldering wreck.

….

With one titan down and the other a haphazardly stumbling mess, the heretics began to falter. The Marauders and Valkyries returned. IT took in the end two hundred-fifty shells from thirty tanks and basilisks, forty missiles, two direct bomb hits, and a trio of Valkyries with the brand new augur missiles shooting it in the back tow bring it down, but the reaver finally detonated in a spectacular orb of plasma that removed a few thousand heretics and two of the three Valkyries from both materium and immaterium. Uexhall went ballistic as his army collapsed, but was forced to jon them in flight as the marauders made their way rearward first. "All officers, report status" Wolfe instructed over the vox.

"Holding strong and eager to finish the job" Werner said.

"We'll be fine" Surring's shaken voice replied.

"Let's put the wounded beast down!" Avard belted. Wolfe turned to Amin, who nodded.

"Fifteenth Kragar, advance, drive the enemy from his positions!" A blue-red tide streamed out of the trenches and across the field of corpses. Something akin to a line formed, bayonets glittering in the sun. The Kragarian fifteenth advanced, and held…

…

"Is anyone still breathing out there?" Fury asked as he dragged Koll's scorched corpse and Vinncenn's unconscious form away from the smoking cockpit and the still red hot metal that had scorched Rane and Krane to skeletons. No response but a faint _thud_ as Donnel's corpse fell from the pintel. Outside the steady blaze of lasguns had drowned out the shrieks of rage of the cultists trying to get in, the first half dozen of which had lost their heads to his bolter pistol. Fury stumbled, and his fractured right arm jolted painfully against the metal wall. "Anyone?"

"Here" Allis said, clutching the bottom of the ladder. "Curze is dead." Something jolted the tank, and they heard the scrape of tearing metal.

"Anyone still breathing out there?" Avard demanded as he stepped inside.

"Yeah" Fury responded. Avard stooped as he entered the main cabin, saluted, and withdrew so the medics could swarm in. Fury waved orderlies Gullins and Sertin off him. "Just splint this damn arm and I'll keep going, It's not even bleeding out, screw off" he said, getting to his feet. Two troopers: Private Herotin and Corporal Alliry, carried Vincenns out. Gullins dropped to his knees by Kol's side.

"He's dead, nothing we can do" he said as Fury helped Allis get down.

Koll twitched. Some kind of dry, dying moan rose from his lips. "I've been through worse" he whispered, and then passed out as the two orderlies went to work. Fury and Allis stepped outside and watched the regiment stream past, some calling out to them as they went.

"We won" Allis said, exhausted.

"Only the battle, private, we still have a planet to purge" Fury responded. "Now lets go tell the colonel we're still breathing." They joined the regiment and made their way towards a Chimera with the battle-flag waving from it.

….

Epilogue:

Abeline Aeres stared longingly through the grate cover at the ruined streets of her home city. She withdrew hurriedly as a pair of cultists, faces mangled by cybernetics, walked by talking quietly. She peeked out again when she remembered they couldn't see her. She searched their horrific faces for a resemblance to anyone she had known. The female one had a necklace with a broken glass pendant. _Hailes?_ She recalled her old friend. Before she could decide something grabbed her from behind and threw her to the stone floor of the old warehouse.

"Out of my way girl" Inquisitor Malleus Sorfin growled stepping up to look out.

"W-why didn't you just ask?" Abeline said, pulling herself up shakily and clutching at her now-skinned shins and forearms. Several new bloodstains appeared on the wool skirt she'd been wearing for the past week.

"I did, you should have picked it up, psykers don't need to speak" Malleus growled.

"I didn't hear, I don't want to" she responded timidly, sitting down against a dust covered pillar and hugging her knees to her chest.

"Why not?"

"They're the reason those monsters came, aren't they? It's my fault everybody's been corrupted, hasn't it?" They met eyes, her watery blue ones, his black slits laced with vision augmentics.

"No, that's your brother's fault for not listening to me when I told him the voice he kept hearing would eat his mind if he listened to it" Malleus growled. "Now, how do you pick up on a psychic signal?" Abeline tried to sense his liitle prod, feel the warp around her-then memories of everyone she loved and cared for trying to tear her apart with her bare hands flashed through her and she jolted back. A massive scream tore through her mind, sending her reeling to the floor. She hit the unforgiving ground and curled up, clutching her hands as tears began to flow and the world outside crushed in on her. "You have a power, use it or I'll burn you with the rest of the heretics" Malleus said to her, walking away and shaking his head. "We'll be leaving for the sewers out in fifteen minutes, get yourself ready." From her prone position, Abeline stared at the little bars of sunlight cast by the window on upon the floor, too weak to crawl over to it.

"Help me somebody" she whispered.


End file.
